NFT marketplace OpenSea is teaming up with MoonPay to enable direct credit card payments for the purchase of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), opening the doors to investors that don’t own cryptocurrency, according to reports.
People who want to buy, sell, trade, and collect NFTs can pay directly with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Apple Pay, Google Pay and other methods, without first having to convert to specific cryptocurrencies, a MoonPay spokesperson told Block Crypto. The payment methods can be used for all sales on the OpenSeas platform, including initial mint, primary sales, and secondary sales.
While debit cards are currently accepted as payment, users are still required to connect to a digital wallet. With direct card payments in partnership with MoonPay, the process is simplified and no crypto or wallet is needed. The move is intended to grow OpenSea’s market to people who don’t have a native understanding of crypto, according to Ethereum World News.
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OpenSea customers pay directly on the platform and “aren’t tied to using a custodial ledger or forced to use a specific token,” Block Crypto reported. NFTs on OpenSea are delivered on-chain and handled natively. People paying with cards could be subjected to additional fees, however.
The new payment feature is being introduced to select users in stages, MoonPay told Block Crypto. MoonPay first launched the feature in January when Mastercard collaborated with Coinbase to facilitate NFT buys.
Opensea is the dominant NFT marketplace by trading volume, according to Ethereum World, and recently announced it was onboarding Solana-based NFTs. In January, the company raised $300 million in a Series C funding round at a $13.3 billion post-money valuation. In February, the platform processed $5 billion in trading volume, its highest yet.
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MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright said recently that implementing fiat-based payment services could lead to broad-based adoption.
“Right now, the NFT market is limited to the hundreds of millions of people who own cryptocurrency. MoonPay’s NFT Checkout has just opened the door to billions more who own credit cards by making ownership both simple and fast,” he said, per Ethereum World.