The Covid-19 pandemic made visible the difficulties of small entrepreneurs to sustain themselves in a hit economy and, those who managed to recover, used the technology in their hands to expand their field and attract more customers.
For this reason, the treatment between the consumer and the merchant became more efficient, in addition to the rise of delivery services that increased significantly with the confinement.
The report "Strive México: paths towards the resilience of MYPES", presented on November 8 in Mexico City, showed that 86% of microenterprises reported economic effects from Covid-19, these being the ones with the fewest tools to Prepare for and face a health emergency like the one in 2020.
One in three micro and small businesses in Mexico is led by a woman and the report indicates that there are low levels of digitization in their processes, which generates limited access to financial products and services.
Strive México, which has the alliance of the consulting firm BFA Global and Fundación Capital, is an initiative that seeks to support 400,000 micro and small businesses in a personalized way in the country over the next three years, through tools to digitize their operations.
The Center for Inclusive Growth is Mastercard's social impact arm, funds programs focused on financial inclusion, and has a research team to share data and experiences among small business owners.
Luz Gómez, vice president of Mastercard's Center for Inclusive Growth, assured that the pandemic intensified the burden for women between home and work.
“Many businesswomen had to be at home with their children.
We have seen that due to this double burden, they did not invest in their businesses or in new digital strategies to be more resilient in the workforce.
We want to close that gap with these types of programs, accompany women and work with other women who have digitized their businesses”.
There is a significant number of digital tools that will help MYPES in this process.
Irina Valassi, Mastercard Product Management, explained what these instruments will consist of.
“In the project there will be many tools: payment reconciliation, financial administration, to be able to create a web page and be able to make sales through this page, have a presence on social networks and that this tool translates into sales.
Mauricio Schwartzmann, Country Manager of Mastercard Mexico, trusts in the commitment to financial inclusion to achieve the goals in 2025. "Over the next three years we will be approaching 400,000 MYPES in Mexico, many of them led by women to provide them with the ability to sell online.
In addition, he assured that from 2015 to the end of 2021, global digitization initiatives incorporated more than 675 million people into the digital economy.
Of those, 25 million are micro and medium-sized companies.
“The pandemic was at least five years ahead of us in terms of digital acceleration.
In the world, contactless payments grew brutally.
In Mexico it is still a pending agenda and it is part of the initiatives that we present at the local level, to see how we increase these digital capacities.
Not only in the online world, but also in the physical world.
Micro and small companies concentrate a large part of the generation of employment in Mexico.
Its optimization will bring greater competitiveness in the market and will make the global economy an optimal and inclusive space for all small entrepreneurs in the country.