Real impact for small businesses

To support small businesses around the globe, Mastercard Strive relies on evidence-based decision-making to design more effective and impactful programs. However, sifting through the noise to find relevant, meaningful impact evidence requires a significant amount of work—which is why we launched the Small Business Evidence Map last year. This month, we updated the Evidence Map with new studies and an improved user interface. We encourage organizations supporting small businesses to explore the updates to help guide their programmatic and strategic decision-making.

We’ve also had a chance to reflect on our small business initiatives focused on improving access to finance. Over three years of working to enable greater access to capital and digital financial services for small businesses, several insights on designing and delivering digital and data-first solutions have emerged for us:?

• Relevance is key: digital financial solutions must meet small businesses where they are. A tailored, user-centric approach ensures these solutions are relevant and practical for their unique challenges and opportunities.
• Trust matters: building trust is crucial for the adoption of digital tools. Whether through in-person support, leveraging peer networks, or trusted local champions, trust is the foundation of successful engagement.
• Innovation inspires action: behavioral science tools like gamification can drive positive financial outcomes, incentivizing small businesses to save, repay on time, and embrace digital tools.

Our GO DIGITAL partner in Poland, Fundacja LBC Business Women Foundation (LBC), also recently shared the outcomes of their recent campaign assessing the digital readiness of Polish women-led small businesses to offer tailored digital tool recommendations and support services. Insights show that 67% of women-led small businesses have achieved accelerated growth due to adopting digital tools in the last two years. The most adopted tools are focused on process automation, data analytics, and e-commerce. However, women-led small businesses still need support to grow, as 48% of these businesses have limited access to training, 21% face gaps in sales technology, and 36% need more cybersecurity.

Overall, 2024 has been a productive and fulfilling year for Mastercard Strive, and we’re so grateful you’re with us on this journey. We wish everyone a happy holiday season and a wonderful New Year when it comes.

As always, we invite you to explore our Insights library to learn more about how Mastercard Strive and our partners enable small business growth and resilience worldwide.

Insights

Cybersecurity for small businesses: Understanding the costs, barriers, and opportunities

Did you know that 60% of small businesses close within six months of a cyberattack? Yet, many remain underprepared for the growing risks of ransomware, phishing, and supply chain attacks. This post takes a look at the costs and barriers associated with cybersecurity solutions for small businesses in addition to some of the solutions Mastercard Strive EU is funding through its recent Innovation Fund.

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Highlights from the Mastercard Strive EU Innovation Fund

This interactive report from the Mastercard Strive EU program analyzed nearly 500 eligible fund applications to better understand the types of organizations that applied, the challenges they sought to address, and the solutions they proposed—offering important insights on EU startups and innovators developing small business solutions. For instance, a lack of access to financing remains the single biggest challenge for startup applicants, while AI is widespread across proposed solutions. Learn more in our report.

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Using behavioral science and gamification to drive positive financial behaviors with small businesses: Learnings from Flourish Fi

Changing financial behaviors can be challenging, especially for micro- and small enterprises, who often lack time and must balance many aspects of their business simultaneously. As part of its project with Mastercard Strive, Flourish Fi partnered with financial service providers in Brazil that serve micro-enterprises and small businesses to test different digital approaches to encourage positive habits from their customers. A key takeaway: rewards must have perceived value to motivate small businesses. This post shares some key insights and lessons we learned through discovery research, our partnerships, and resulting outcomes.

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