Mastercard and Microsoft Philippines will equip 10,000 small businesses with artificial intelligence (AI) and digital tools.

In a statement released Wednesday, Mastercard said this project will be co-implemented by &frnds, a provider of business-to-business AI tools that digitalizes sales operations of large companies selling fast-moving consumer goods to small enterprises.

Mastercard said that using this technology, small businesses can obtain financial services and rewards that suit their needs and growth plans.

AI services for consumers

For its part, Microsoft will provide small enterprises with its Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft Copilot Studio as AI assistants that will enhance their chat or communication platforms for receiving and processing goods orders.

“We see huge value to the project which is not only enabling these traditional stores to benefit from the latest AI-technology, but also enables our enterprise clients to use the embedded Copilot to gain direct access and data insights to serve these millions of small retailers better,” Microsoft Philippines chief executive officer Peter Maquera said.

These efforts are part of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, which has collected data from 150,000 small enterprises located in emerging markets in creating efficient business solutions, especially for women entrepreneurs who own 66 percent of the total small businesses in the Philippines, based on data from the Asian Development Bank.