Mastercard Cardholders Will Be Able To Purchase NFTs On Many Platforms

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have taken another step into the mainstream with multinational payment processing giant Mastercard's announcement a few days ago that its cardholders can now acquire NFTs on various platforms without first purchasing cryptocurrencies.

The financial services company has been concentrating on expanding its payment networks to accommodate NFTs over the last year.

To enable its cardholders to make direct NFT transactions, the company has partnered with several top NFT marketplaces.

At present, users must purchase cryptocurrencies to bid on and purchase NFTs. However, with the Mastercard announcement, cardholders can make NFT purchases without first purchasing cryptocurrencies.

"We're working to enable NFT commerce with Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay," Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard's Executive Vice President, Digital Asset & Blockchain Products & Partnerships, said in a press release.

Mr Dhamodharan added that with 2.9 billion Mastercard cards in circulation worldwide, this move could influence the NFT ecosystem significantly.

The results of a poll of 35,000 respondents from 40 countries, which found that 45 per cent of consumers have purchased or are considering purchasing an NFT, inspired the company's decision to expand its payment network to the fast-growing NFT ecosystem.

Fifty per cent of the consumers polled said they'd like more purchasing options.

Customers can expect world-class security from the company's latest payment option, similar to the protection people "enjoy when making transactions in a store or online with a Mastercard card".

Mr Dhamodharan said that the company was leveraging its cybersecurity capabilities to improve security and secure user data for purchases made with a Mastercard card.

The company's efforts are to capitalise on the NFT market's immense potential by expanding payment options for consumers and establishing NFT communities.

Mr Dhamodharan added that they were excited to continue working with all of these businesses to make this market more inviting, accessible, and simple.

Earlier this year, Mastercard launched the NFT card-purchase service in conjunction with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

Mr Dhamodharan had then stated in a blog post that this partnership would allow people to utilise their Mastercard cards to make purchases on Coinbase's future NFT marketplace.