Payments giant Mastercard Inc MA is opening up its payments network to NFTs and Web3.
What Happened: In an announcement on Thursday, the company said it was working with a number of NFT marketplaces and web3 infrastructure providers to make the process of buying NFTs easier and safer.
“For NFT creators, these changes grow their potential customer base to millions more people all over the world,” said Raj Dhamodharan, the head of digital asset and blockchain products at Mastercard.
Mastercard said it is working with Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox SAND/USD, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and MoonPay to enable NFT commerce.
Users will be able to use their Mastercard cards to purchase NFTs and utilize crypto services on these platforms, without needing to buy cryptocurrencies first.
“With 2.9 billion Mastercard cards worldwide, this change could have a big impact on the NFT ecosystem,” said Dhamodharan.
Earlier this year, Mastercard partnered with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc COIN to ease NFT purchases on its platform.
See Also: HOW TO BUY NON-FUNGIBLE TOKENS (NFTS)
Over the last year, NFTs saw a massive explosion in popularity and sales. However, over the last month, NFT sales saw a 65% decline from $4.6 billion the month prior, as per data from Crypto Slam. Ethereum ETH/USD remains the most popular blockchain for NFTs, settling $1.39 billion of the $1.59 billion worth of transactions last month.
Price Action: According to data from Benzinga Pro, Mastercard shares traded 0.014% higher during the after-market session.
