Groundbreaking study of TikTok creators spotlights resilience, rising incomes; Visa expands support with modern payments, business tools, and explores a potential creator agent pilot with Karat Financial.
At Web Summit 2025 today, Visa Inc. (V) strengthened its long-standing commitment to supporting digital creators as a powerful force in the global economy. Building on its recognition of creators as small businesses, Visa is using the scale of its network to help creators easily and securely pay and get paid, access capital and grow their enterprises with the same tools and resources available to small businesses worldwide.
Visa's new creator-research, Monetized: Visa 2025 Creator Report is a comprehensive study of the creator economy spanning five regions: the United States, Brazil, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. Conducted with Morning Consult, the study surveyed TikTok creators and explores both the business challenges and opportunities facing more than 1,000 content creators surveyed from May - August 2025. The findings offer a fresh perspective on how creators are building and sustaining their businesses worldwide.
"Creators are among the most dynamic small business segments in the world," said Jonathan Kolozsvary, Global Head of Small Business, Visa Commercial Solutions, Visa. "Our creator report showcases their ingenuity and guides how Visa is investing to empower the creator economy, providing specialized financial tools and resources that help creators scale their business locally and globally."
In tandem with the report, Visa introduced plans to explore a potential agentic pilot program with Karat Financial.1 Karat is a fintech leader in the creator space, providing credit cards and business banking tailored to creators. The pilot will focus on leveraging agents to help resolve common friction points for creators, like optimizing their accounts receivables and payables.
Monetized Key Findings
Monetized showcases how creators are actively developing business skills – blending self-taught lessons and peer learning, particularly for things like contract negotiation and financial management. Key takeaways from the report include:
- 88% of surveyed creators worldwide expect their revenue to increase over the next year, reflecting growing optimism about earning potential
- Most creators surveyed rely on personal funds, community support, and innovative funding such as crowdfunding, signaling a need for more tailored financial products for creators
- Modern payment processors are preferred, enabling a global audience and faster access to earnings, though payment delays remain a challenge
- Creators surveyed are global entrepreneurs, with 52% receiving payments from outside of their home country
- 94% of surveyed creators report encouragement from friends and family, firmly cementing content creation's reputation as a valued career path
Empowering Creators to Efficiently Run their Businesses
Visa is exploring opportunities to team up with Karat on a new agentic pilot program with the goal of making the business side of creativity easier. Inspired by real challenges highlighted in Monetized, this initiative would be designed to give creators practical tools to manage their finances and streamline operations. Potential tools could include:
- Smarter payments: Agentic automation that could help streamline sending, receiving and tracking payments – with built-in human oversight when needed.
- Automated reminders: Cash flow could be kept on track with tools that handle follow-ups for late invoices or brand payments.
- Trusted database: Users could have the option to store and verify buyer and supplier details in one place to save time and help prevent fraud.
Karat brings deep expertise in supporting creators financially: pioneering credit cards that underwrite based on creator revenue and social metrics and launching business banking for creators.
Visa's Commitment to Creators
Visa sees content creators as a dynamic force fueling communities and commerce globally - a commitment Visa formalized at Web Summit in 2024, where it officially recognized creators as small businesses. The commitment to developing creator-driven tools and the findings of the report strengthen Visa's dedication to serving this next generation of entrepreneurs with advanced payment technology, educational resources and flexible financial products tailored for creators' unique needs.
The full report found here: Monetized: Visa 2025 Creator Report. Visa remains committed to supporting the creator community and partnering to drive innovation, growth, and access for creators worldwide.
About Visa
Visa (NYSE:V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, sellers, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.
1 Karat is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services and the Karat Business Banking Visa Card are provided by Grasshopper Bank, N.A., Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. The FDIC's deposit insurance only protects against the failure of an FDIC-insured bank. The Karat Visa Business Credit Card is issued by Cross River Bank, Member FDIC, under a separate license from Visa U.S.A. Inc.
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