SME Foundation has signed a three-year partnership agreement with Visa to support cottage, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (CMSMEs) in Bangladesh.

Anwar Hossain Chowdhury, managing director of the foundation, and Sabbir Ahmed, country manager for Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan at Visa, penned the deal at the former's head office in Dhaka, according to a press release.

"By integrating advanced digital payment systems, we aim to enhance financial inclusion, reduce operational costs, and drive revenue growth for SMEs," Chowdhury said.

"Beyond payments, our focus extends to equipping SMEs with cutting-edge technologies such as business intelligence, artificial intelligence, and robust cybersecurity measures, ensuring they remain competitive and resilient in the digital age," he added.

"Together with Visa's expertise and our dedication to SME development, we envision creating a smarter, more secure, and sustainable business ecosystem that empowers SMEs to thrive in an ever-evolving global market."

Ahmed said: "We are delighted to support the entrepreneurs of our country through our partnership with SME Foundation. Visa has demonstrated the power of digital transformation over decades and we are happy to bring our global expertise to the vibrant SME community.

"Our financial and digital skills programmes can enable entrepreneurs to integrate technology faster, gain global market access and revolutionise businesses," he added.

With this partnership, Visa and the SME Foundation aim to provide support to small and medium-sized businesses to develop their capabilities using Visa's expert content on financial and business skills.

This includes regional entrepreneurship development training, exchanging global best practices and tools to enhance their skillsets, capabilities for e-commerce and wider markets, secure online payments systems and facilitating access to finance by introducing Visa commercial/SME products and solutions.

Additionally, both will collaborate to design and implement pilot programmes for government incentive disbursements, enhancing resource personnel capacity, and strengthening coordination efforts.

Visa will also provide payments intelligence for policymaking through tools like the Visa Government Insights Hub, utilising SME profile data to offer various SME-related services.

Shruti Gupta, head of commercial and money movement solutions for India and South Asia at Visa, Md Mostafizur Rahman, assistant general manager, and Farzana Khan, general manager, along with other officials from the both organisations were also present.