Mastercard Partners With NFT Marketplaces for ‘Easier and Safer’ Purchases

In a bid to make buying non-fungible tokens (NFTs) “easier and safer,” Mastercard is teaming with various NFT marketplaces to allow payments over its network for NFT purchases, according to a press release emailed to PYMNTS Thursday (June 9).

Mastercard said it’s working on enabling NFT commerce with a variety of companies, including Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway and Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay.

The release noted that Mastercard is working with these companies to allow people to buy NFTs with their Mastercard cards, using either the companies’ marketplaces or using their crypto services.

The NFT marketplaces represent a large swathe of the NFT space, according to Mastercard, and have generated over $25 billion in sales in 2021 in categories like art, sports, video games and collectibles. In addition, the companies will help continue to expand Mastercard’s Web3 adoption.

This development builds off the company’s previous work in adding its payment network to the Coinbase NFT market, which opened to every Coinbase user in May. The payment giant’s interest in crypto comes as a survey from the company found that 45% of respondents had bought an NFT or might consider doing so.

PYMNTS wrote that in April, Mastercard filed 15 trademark applications for NFTs and metaverse needs with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

See also: Mastercard Seeking Metaverse and NFT Trademarks

The company is planning a digital community that will come with interactions fueled by NFTs and metaverse payment card processing, along with an eMarket for those buying and selling downloadable digital goods and virtual reality events.

One trademark was for the company’s “Priceless” slogan, with art, text, audio and video in NFT form. Another was for the company logo to be used for digital transactions, and a third would add the Mastercard name to concerts, sporting events, festivals, award ceremonies and financial education conferences in the metaverse.