Mastercard and CARE have launched Mastercard Strive Women, a new program that aims to strengthen the financial health and resilience of small businesses. This launch was announced for the APEC economies of Peru and Vietnam, as well as in Pakistan, with a focus on small businesses led by women.

Strive Women is aimed at recognising that women-led small businesses are critical contributors to economies, communities, and households worldwide. The program will focus on strengthening the financial health of small businesses by working with local partners in each market to deliver tailored financial products and support services while addressing gender barriers. The programme strives to engage with six million entrepreneurs through various campaigns, directly supporting more than 300,000 entrepreneurs, with a significant focus on empowering women to grow their businesses and increase their economic potential.

Strive Women will be carried out by CARE, an international humanitarian organisation, through a USD nine million grant from the Mastercard Impact Fund. This new phase of partnership between CARE and Mastercard Center follows the outcome of the Ignite program, which unlocked USD 154.9 million in loans from an initial grant of USD 5.26 million. As stated in the official press release, following the program, 79% of female participants increased their sales, and 89% reported increased confidence in running the business.

Empowering entrepreneurs Strive Women seeks to extend the scale and impact of previous programs in each market, going deeper by building a broader ecosystem of stakeholders committed to long-term support for women-led small businesses. The program will also address the gender barriers women-led businesses face by testing innovations related to the climate crisis and childcare. Furthermore, Strive Women will seek to develop methods that can help small business owners balance both household and business cash flow, prepare for and manage financial shocks, and increase women’s decision-making power.

The Strive Women program will focus on four core pillars of work. These include supporting women-led small businesses to grow through increasing access and usage of financial products – partnering with financial services providers to co-design tailored products, innovating to overcome gender barriers, such as childcare, and building ecosystems of support by activating networks and sharing learning tools. .