Financial giant Mastercard continues to delve into the non-fungible token (NFT) market and has now announced that they are working with various platforms in that sector to make it easier to purchase digital collectibles directly with their cards.
Between the platforms that partnered with Mastercard for these purposes there are Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway and MoonPay.
The company highlighted that “with 2.9 billion Mastercard cards worldwide, this change could have a major impact on the NFT ecosystem,” according to a report. release published this June 9.
In this way, Mastercard seeks simplify the purchase of collectible tokens without users having to acquire crypto assets.
The company’s new commitment wants to make a difference from markets such as OpenSea, in which people must register, have a wallet, and acquire ether, Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency in order to access NFTs. This, without counting the high commissions charged by the Ethereum network and its partial slowness for transactions, according to the Mastercard note
With the above, they highlight in this way those that they consider disadvantages of the main blockchain used for trading of non-fungible tokens.
“Overall, these integrations are designed to make crypto more accessible and help the NFT ecosystem continue to grow, innovate and attract more fans,” said Raj Dhamodharan, Executive Vice President of the company.
Mastercard sees positive future in NFTs
The decision to invest in the NFT sector seems to be supported, among other things, by a survey carried out by the company of some 35,000 people from 40 countries. According to the results, it was found that the 45% of those people had purchased an NFT or would consider doing so. Many of them are Mastercard users.
“Approximately half (of those surveyed) were looking for more flexibility in buying an NFT: being able to pay with cryptocurrency for everyday purchases or using a credit or debit card,” the statement added.
For several years, the payment company has been giving clear signs of the importance of the cryptocurrency industry for them. So much so, that they also offer consulting services to banks and merchants interested in trading cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens. Central banks with an interest in digital currencies are included.
The first was Coinbase
As mentioned at the beginning, it is not the first time that Mastercard has played with NFTs.
Earlier this year, it announced its alliance with bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, which also developed a platform for digital collectibles, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
This became the first NFT market in which users could buy the collectibles with their Mastercard cards. The result seems to be positive, in view of its expansion towards other markets.
All of this Mastercard move toward NFTs is doing so at a time when the market for digital collectibles moving at a slower rate than was observed last year.
A report from the NonFungible data site, reviewed by this medium, highlighted that the ecosystem of these cryptoactives is faltering, it has fewer active portfolios, fewer saleslosses, less liquidity, as well as a constant decrease in the volume traded in dollars.
In this sense, the firm pointed out that NFT sales fell progressively during the first months of 2022, as well as the volume of dollars traded.
However, they consider that this market is not finished, they explain that everything that is happening is signs that the ecosystem is becoming healthier.