Coinbase and Mastercard have announced a partnership to simply NFT purchases on Coinbase’s upcoming NFT marketplace, Coinbase NFT.
In a blog post on Tuesday, January 18, Prakash Hariramani, senior director of product at Coinbase, said that they were working with Mastercard to allow everyone easy access to NFTs and “to classify NFTs as digital goods, allowing a broader group of consumers to purchase NFTs.”
We’re working to make #NFTs more accessible because we believe tech should be inclusive. Excited to announce that we’re partnering with @coinbase to let people use their Mastercard cards to make purchases on Coinbase’s upcoming NFT marketplace. https://t.co/T6QpSIaKtK
— Mastercard News (@MastercardNews) January 18, 2022
As Crypto Economy reported, Coinbase introduced its NFT marketplace in October 2021. According to Coinbase, its upcoming Coinbase NFT platform will be “a peer-to-peer marketplace that will make minting, purchasing, showcasing, and discovering NFTs easier than ever.” All NFTs will be on-chain, and the initial launch will support Ethereum based ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards with multi-chain support planned soon after. The exact launch date has not been announced yet.
However, the waitlist was quite a success as there were more than one million signups on the Coinbase NFT waitlist on the first day it opened. Coinbase received so much traffic that its servers were unable to cope with the insane load.
Coinbase NFT is yet to be launched, but the exchange is working to launch an easy-to-use platform that will allow users to purchase NFTs with fiat currencies. The integration Mastercard payment method to Coinbase NFT will enable users to directly purchase an NFT using their Mastercard credit or debit card, all without having to buy cryptocurrency first.
Currently, the NFT purchase is a complex process for a newbie as most NFT marketplaces require users to purchase cryptocurrency first, add it to a secure wallet, and then connect that wallet to the marketplace, a process that isn’t as simple as other typical online purchase. These difficulties create a barrier to entry. Payments with Mastercard will only need a card number and some other small details.
Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s VP of digital asset and blockchain products, in a separate Mastercard announcement, said that Mastercard would also make of its cybersecurity capabilities, made possible by its recent acquisition of CipherTrace, to help bolster the safety of NFT purchases. According to Mastercard, the partnership with Coinbase is part of Mastercard’s broader work to support the crypto ecosystem with new tools for crypto wallets and cybersecurity protections.
Raj said:
“Getting more people involved safely and securely is perhaps the best way to help the NFT market thrive. As it does, Mastercard sees even greater potential for NFTs’ underlying tech to go beyond art and collectibles into many more areas.”
