Mastercard Collaborates With Coinbase, Users Can Buy NFT Without Wallet

JAKARTA – Credit card company Mastercard has announced that users of the upcoming nonfungible token marketplace (NFT) Coinbase will be able to use their cards to make purchases as part of a new partnership.

In a blog post Tuesday, Jan. 18, Mastercard's executive vice president for digital assets and blockchain products, Raj Dhamodharan, said under the agreement, NFTs would be considered "digital goods" and could be purchased using credit cards.

The move aims to allow non-crypto natives to log into NFT without needing to use a wallet and buy Ether (ETH) or other tokens.

“Cryptocurrency fans are used to this process,” Dhamodharan said. "But for most people, it's not simple, it's not intuitive. We thought it would be a lot easier. That will ensure NFT is accessible to everyone [...] Engaging more people safely and securely is probably the best way to help the NFT market grow.”

Since Coinbase first announced the NFT marketplace – under the planned name “Coinbase NFT” – in October, more than 1 million people have signed up to be on the waiting list. The crypto exchange plans to make the NFT platform available to US users before opening it up to users in other countries.

Following the growth and interest in the NFT sector in 2021, major crypto exchanges FTX and Binance also launched their own NFT marketplaces ahead of Coinbase's announcement last October.

In June, Binance also launched an NFT platform that aims to “provide the highest liquidity and lowest fees to users.” FTX followed suit in September with a dedicated platform for customers based in the United States.

According to a recent report from DappRadar, there may be higher demand for NFTs in 2022 after the previous year's spike. The platform reported that NFT trading generated $10.7 billion in the third quarter of 2021 to $11.9 billion in Q4, with the first ten days of 2022 "looking strong."

One of them is that NFT trading on the OpenSea platform exploded in Indonesia when Ghozali Everyday was able to sell photos of himself worth billions of rupiah.

“Despite the volatile cryptocurrency cycle, NFT maintains a stagnant positive trend,” said DappRadar analyst Pedro Herrera, as quoted by Cointelegraph.