Mastercard joins together with The Sandbox, MoonPay, and others to expand NFT acceptance through card payments.
Mastercard, a 56-year-old financial services company, wants to make it unnecessary for NFT purchasers to first hold cryptocurrency.
Mastercard has signed agreements with seven additional partners to provide NFT access through traditional card payments. Metaverse participant The Sandbox, as well as Immutable X, Candy Digital, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and MoonPay, are among Mastercard’s new partners. Mastercard hopes to promote NFT trade with these agreements. The Web3 community appears to be becoming increasingly interested in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), especially as the metaverse business grows.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are blockchain-based digital collectibles that are generally acquired using cryptocurrency. Mastercard is currently exploring ways to make these digital artefacts more accessible to customers.
“We’re working with these firms to make it possible for users to use their Mastercard cards to buy NFTs on one of their markets or through their crypto services.” With 2.9 billion Mastercard cards in circulation worldwide, this shift might have a significant influence on the NFT ecosystem, according to Raj Dhamodharan, an executive vice president at Mastercard.
Mastercard, a 56-year-old financial services company, wants to abolish the requirement for NFT customers to first acquire cryptocurrencies.
Over 35,000 consumers in 40 countries were polled by the credit and debit card company lately. According to the findings, 45 percent of consumers had purchased or were considering purchasing an NFT.
According to the same survey, purchasers who are interested in acquiring NFTs want to be able to pay for them with a credit or debit card.
“These current initiatives are aimed at capitalising on the NFT market’s immense potential by extending payment options for customers and establishing NFT communities,” Dhamodharan explained.
Mastercard has already been collaborating with Coinbase to enable cash payments on the crypto exchange’s new NFT platform.
According to data from industry tracker DappRadar, NFT sales topped $25 billion (approximately Rs. 1,84,700 crore) in 2021, as the speculative crypto asset skyrocketed in popularity.
More markets are springing up all the time to meet the market’s rising need for NFTs.
Salesforce, a US-based software giant, introduced its own NFT platform earlier this week, allowing for NFT trading and buying.