Mastercard’s Recent Partnerships Enables Purchase of NFTs Using Debit/Credit Card

Multinational financial services company Mastercard looks to make the purchase of NFTs possible using its debit and credit cards. This forms part of the firm’s move to “bring its payments network to Web3” after announcing partnerships with various NFT marketplaces. Mastercard hopes to make NFT transactions “easier and safer” through the integration of its services.

Partners of the company include Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, and Nifty Gateway. It has also linked with MoonPay, a Web3 infrastructure provider. According to Mastercard, these platforms collectively “generated more than $25 billion in sales in 2021 — from art to sports to video games to collectibles to metaverse platforms.”

“Mastercard is expanding its partnership with NFT marketplaces and #web3 providers to simplify the process of buying NFTs. Now anyone can buy an NFT with their Mastercard, without having to buy crypto first,” it tweeted on June 10. Mastercard Executive Vice President of Digital Asset Blockchain Products & Partnerships Raj Dhamodharan furthered that this could have a significant impact on the NFT ecosystem, as the company issued 2.9 billion Mastercard cards worldwide.

“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’ NFT marketplaces or using their crypto services,” Dhamodharan elaborated. The company firmly believes that this move is “exactly what people want.” Recently, it conducted a survey covering 35,000 people in 40 countries which showed that 45% of respondents had already bought an NFT or would consider doing so. The same survey found that 50% of respondents were looking for flexibility in payment options for everyday purchases or NFT transactions.

Earlier this year, Mastercard announced its partnership with prominent crypto company Coinbase. This was geared to simplify the purchasing process on the platform’s NFT site. The financial services firm also added payments-focused consulting services for banks and merchants in an effort to further the development and integration of the blockchain industry.

Source: Decrypt