MasterCard will allow NFTs to be purchased by card

The historic American payment giant MasterCard has made a major strategic choice: to avoid disruption by positioning itself as a player in the democratisation of new payment technologies by linking traditional and innovative payment methods. Its new partnership with Coinbase confirms this trend.

FACTS

• Make buying NFTs as easy as buying any merchandise sold on an e-commerce site. It is with this clear objective that MasterCard presents its new foray into the crypto-asset market.

• The American payment giant has teamed up with a reference in the crypto-asset and NFT (non-fungible tokens) market: Coinbase (a cryptocurrency exchange and storage platform).

• Consumers will soon be able to use their Mastercard debit or credit cards to make purchases on Coinbase's NFT marketplace. This means they will not have to open a dedicated digital wallet to buy crypto-currencies before they can afford NFTs.

• MasterCard is thus committed to democratising this market, opening it up to as many people as possible, by relying on historical means of payment and the card in particular.

CHALLENGES

• A race to the bottom: MasterCard has been committed for several months to establishing itself as a reference in the crypto-asset market with a dual ambition. Firstly, it is a question of the historic payment giant avoiding the disruption of new alternative payment players, but also of not letting itself be overtaken by Visa, which is very active on the subject. Visa made headlines last August when it bought an NFT CryptoPunk.

• Maintaining the legitimacy of the card: The core of MasterCard's offering is based on payment cards. But with the exponential growth of digital payment services, some voices are suggesting that the future of payment could be cardless. To counter these predictions, MasterCard is now committed to giving the card a place in the democratisation of digital assets.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• According to a study by Blockchain specialist Chainalysis, $40 billion was spent in 2021 on NFT digital assets.

• The end of the year was particularly dynamic. Sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) reached $10.7 billion in the third quarter and $11.6 billion in the fourth quarter, according to data from OpenSea, an online marketplace dedicated to NFTs.

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