Mastercard to Allow Cardholders to Make Direct NFT Purchases

Mastercard, the international payment processing giant, is expanding its payment network to include non-fungible token (NFT) markets and Web3.

Over the past year, the financial services company has been focusing on expanding its payment networks to include NFTs. The company has worked with a number of top NFT marketplaces to enable 2.9 billion cardholders to make direct NFT transactions without first purchasing crypto.

Users must currently purchase crypto in order to bid on and purchase NFTs, but with the recent Mastercard partnership, billions of cardholders will be able to skip the process of purchasing and transferring cryptocurrency to NFT markets.

Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay are among the NFT markets with which Mastercard has partnered.

The NFT card purchase service was initially introduced in January of this year in collaboration with Coinbase, allowing consumers to buy NFTs using credit cards directly.

The company's decision to expand its payment network to the emerging NFT ecosystem was also based on a recent survey of 35,000 respondents from 40 countries, which revealed that 45 percent of customers have purchased or are considering purchasing an NFT. Consumers surveyed expressed a desire for more flexible purchasing alternatives, with 50% showing an interest.

Customers can expect world-class security from the company's latest payment option, similar to "when completing purchases in a shop or online using a Mastercard card," according to the company.

Over the last several years, the payment processing giant has exhibited a great interest in the crypto and NFT industries. Mastercard applied for 15 metaverse and NFT-related trademarks in April of this year.

Visa and Mastercard, the two largest mainstream payment processing businesses, have come a long way since barring crypto transactions on their networks, and are now striving to become the leading financial services providers in the decentralized realm. In March, Visa launched an immersion program to help innovators use NFTs to grow their businesses.

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