The main counterpart of Visa, payment processing giant Mastercard, is preparing to add non-fungible tokens to its portfolio. To deliver NFT services to its 2.8 billion cardholders, Mastercard has partnered with seven leading NFT and web3 platforms to offer direct NFT operations without dealing with crypto.
The news rolled out on May 9th on the company's website. Thus, according to the press release, Mastercard has been collaborating with the market leaders for over a year now to allow users to buy NFTs on multiple leading platforms. To make this possible, Mastercard announced collaborations with Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay.
For now, every Mastercard credit or debit card holder can make a safe and easy purchase of non-fungible assets via any of the above-mentioned platforms without crypto exchange. According to Mastercard’s Executive VP of Blockchain Products, Raj Dhamodharan, the company will continue its partnership with the Coinbase NFT marketplace.
The finance processing company also reveals team-ups with a number of firms to offer crypto rewards cards to Mastercard users. These include crypto exchange Gemini x Mastercard credit card, and the crypto lending platform Nexo x Mastercard debit card.
Moreover, the recent Mastercard survey of over 35K people in 40 countries reveals that about 45% of those had already purchased, or would like to buy NFT but only if they could choose the payment option, whether it's crypto or credit/debit card.
The added flexibility would do a great favor to the web3 and NFT market, attracting millions of new users who had been afraid or just doubted using crypto. Moreover, the advanced cybersecurity protocols will allow cardholders to shop safely on the web3 commercial platforms the same as they pay with their cards at a physical store.
While such leaders as Mastercard and Visa are gaining presence in the web3, the global crypto adoption and transition to DeFi seems to be just around the corner.
