Mastercard has unveiled ambitions to increase access to the non-fungible token (NFT) market by using card payments.
In a blog post published on June 9, Raj Dhamodharan, the business’s executive vice president, claimed that the company had collaborated with Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, and Nifty Gateway, and MoonPay to allow NFT trade.
“We’re working with these companies to allow people to use their Mastercard cards for NFTs purchases, whether that’s on one of these companies’ marketplaces or using their crypto services,” he said. “With 2.9 billion Mastercard cards worldwide, this change could have a big impact on the NFT ecosystem.”
Mastercard to ease payments for NFT
Obtaining an NFT from a marketplace such as OpenSea now requires funding a crypto wallet and paying in a token such as ETH or SOL. This is, however, beginning to change.
Coinbase and Mastercard have already teamed up to enable cash payments on Mastercard’s new NFT platform. Visa is keeping a close eye on the NFT business after purchasing a CryptoPunk late last year. MoonPay has been offering its partners an NFT payment solution since January.
According to Dhamodharan’s blog post, a recent Mastercard survey of more than 35,000 people in 40 countries indicated that 45 percent of those polled had purchased or were considering purchasing an NFT, and about half of those polled wanted more flexibility.
Visa also announced the introduction of its own NFT creator program earlier this year to promote independent NFT artists and small businesses looking to increase their revenue using NFT technology.
The promotion of mass adoption of cryptocurrency and NFTs by two of the world’s top payment processing networks might be the impetus for both asset classes to launch a new bull market in the second half of 2022.
When buying NFTs with Mastercard, the same cybersecurity tools and “complete range of capabilities to reinforce customer safety” will be in place as they are when making retail transactions. Making NFTs less vulnerable to phishing scams and more secure for beginners would allow the NFT market to expand.