Payments behemoth Mastercard has announced that users of Coinbase’s non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace will be able to use their credit cards to make purchases.

In a blog post this week, Mastercard executive vice president of digital asset and blockchain products Raj Dhamodharan said that under the agreement, NFTs will be considered “digital goods” and can be bought with a credit card.

The aim is to bring in more of the mainstream, non-crypto users into the NFT-buying world and make it easy for them to buy without the need to first purchase Ethereum (ETH) or Solana (SOL), for example, or figure out how to use crypto-native digital wallets such as MetaMask.

“Cryptocurrency enthusiasts are used to this process,” said Dhamodharan. “But 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 … Getting more people involved safely and securely is perhaps the best way to help the NFT market thrive.”

Shortly after Coinbase announced its upcoming NFT marketplace “Coinbase NFT” in October last year, 1.5 million people joined its waitlist. The crypto exchange says it plans to make the NFT platform available to users in the US before opening it up to users in other countries.

OpenSea acquires Dharma Labs and makes new hires

In other big NFT-industry-related news, leading marketplace in the sector OpenSea has announced it’s bought Dharma Labs, a crypto lending platform and digital wallet.

According to a statement, Dharma Labs will “deactivate” in 30 days and its co-founders, Nadav Hollander and Brendan Forster, will respectively become OpenSea’s new chief technology officer and head of strategy.

In a Twitter stream, OpenSea’s co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer, said he believes the union will help OpenSea “dramatically improve the experience of buying, minting and selling NFTs.”

He added that OpenSea and Dharma Labs share a vision “that NFTs will be the cultural focal point of crypto’s adoption for years to come — and that vision can only be realized if using NFTs becomes easy and delightful for the average person.”

In a statement from Dharma Labs, it advised its users to withdraw or sell their funds before February 18, 2022, stating that they will not need to pay any fees in this process.

 

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