Mastercard announces new crypto partners for its NFT payments service

Mastercard has announced plans to widen access to the non-fungible token (NFT) market through the use of card payments.

In a blog post published on June 9, Raj Dhamodharan, an executive vice president at the company, said it had partnered with Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway and MoonPay to enable NFT commerce.

“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’ marketplaces or using their crypto services,” he said. “With 2.9 billion Mastercard cards worldwide, this change could have a big impact on the NFT ecosystem.”

As things stand, the process of purchasing an NFT from a marketplace like OpenSea typically involves loading a crypto wallet with funds and paying in a token, such as ETH or SOL. But that is starting to change.

Mastercard has already been working with Coinbase to support cash payments on its recently-launched NFT platform. Visa is also looking closely looking at the NFT market after buying a CryptoPunk late last year. MoonPay has also been offering an NFT payments service for its partners since January.

In the blog post, Dhamodharan said that a recent Mastercard survey of more than 35,000 people across 40 countries found that 45% of respondents has bought an NFT or would consider doing so, and that around half wanted more flexibility in payment methods.

“Overall, these integrations are designed to make crypto more accessible and help the NFT ecosystem keep growing, innovating and bringing in more fans,” he said.