Mastercard to Enable Payments for NFTs, Web3

Mastercard has announced that the payment company is working to enable non-fungible token (NFT) commerce with Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay.

"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," Mastercard said.

The new payment system will allow Mastercard holders to directly purchase NFTs from a digital assets marketplace. Prior to Mastercard's new payment strategy, NFT buyers would first have to purchase crypto to complete the transaction.

According to the company, the introduction of the new payment system could have a major impact on the NFT ecosystem as there are currently 2.9 billion Mastercard cards globally.

Mastercard's new NFT commerce has come at a time when NFT marketplaces have already generated more than $25 billion in sales in 2021 from art to sports to video games to collectables to metaverse platforms.

Mastercard is also expanding the adoption of Web3 - a new version of the internet based on blockchain. The company's Web3 expansion is bringing its payment network to Coinbase's new NFT marketplace, which opened to all Coinbase users in May.

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

Recently, Mastercard also partnered with digital assets platform Nexo and DiPocket to launch crypto cards that will allow its customers in Europe to spend digital currencies without touching their funds, Blockchain.News reported. 

Through the partnership, users can spend crypto without depleting their digital asset reserves as they can gain access to a credit line that will allow users to spend as much as 90% of the value of their crypto holdings with Nexo.

According to The Block, the payment giant has also filed for 15 trademarks related to NFTs, crypto and metaverse.

The filings include NFT-backed multimedia, marketplaces for digital goods, and metaverse related payment transaction processing and e-commerce software business.