You’ll soon be able to buy NFTs using Mastercard cards. The payment processing company announced last week that it is expanding its payment network to the NFT space, allowing cardholders to purchase NFTs without having to buy crypto first.
Mastercard said that it has been working on this over the past year, and so far it has managed to secure some high-profile partners such as Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay. If an NFT is sold on one of these marketplaces, or if it’s using their crypto services, you’d be able to buy it using your Mastercard cards.
This follows Mastercard’s previous effort of integrating its payment network into Coinbase’s NFT marketplace. The company believes that with 2.9 billion Mastercard cards in circulation worldwide, this expansion can have a big impact on the NFT ecosystem: customers can get the NFTs they want with less stress and uncertainty, while creators can grow their potential customer base quite significantly.
Mastercard’s decision to delve deeper into the world of Web3 didn’t come out of the blue. Recently, the company held a survey of over 35,000 respondents in 40 countries, and found that 45% had either purchased an NFT or would consider doing so. The findings also showed that around half of the respondents were looking for more flexible payment options.
While the focus is on improving accessibility, Mastercard also claims to be offering a great level of security with this new endeavor, as it wants to give customers similar protections to the ones they enjoy when making transactions in a store or online with a Mastercard card.
Mastercard’s initiative certainly has the potential to increase adoption among NFT customers. Having the ability to bypass the process of buying and transferring crypto to NFT marketplaces will be a welcome addition for customers looking to make their first NFT purchase. While it is still limited to only a few marketplaces, there is always the possibility for Mastercard to team up with more interested parties.
