Coinbase partners with Mastercard to enable NFT purchases, no crypto needed
Coinbase, one of the top crypto exchanges by volume, has announced a partnership with Mastercard, enabling the purchases of NFTs on its upcoming marketplace without needing to hold any cryptocurrencies.
In October 2021, Coinbase announced that it was building a peer-to-peer marketplace for NFTs, allowing users to buy, sell, show, and mint non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. Currently the waitlist for the upcoming NFT marketplace exceeds 2.5 million people.
“Buying digital goods should be as simple as buying a T-shirt or coffee pods on an e-commerce site. You can make your purchase with one click — that’s it.” Raj Dhamodharan, who heads digital asset and blockchain partnerships at Mastercard, said.
“Today, if you want to buy an NFT — such as a digital art piece — you first need to open a crypto wallet, buy crypto, then use it to purchase an NFT in an online marketplace.”
“…for most people, it’s not simple, it’s not intuitive. We think it should be much easier. That will ensure NFTs can be for everyone.”
Mastercard will classify NFTs as “digital goods”, allowing Mastercard users to make the purchase on both credit and debit cards, opening them it to the over US$40 billion NFT market. Buyers will still need a digital asset wallet to store the token.
The NFT market has drawn a lot of interest from companies that are outside the cryptocurrency space. For one recent example, American retail behemoth, Walmart, filed several trademarks revealing that it is looking to create its own NFTs, cryptocurrency, and possible space in the metaverse.
