Coinbase has confirmed a significant new collaboration with Mastercard, in a bid to expand NFT accessibility to new audiences.
The links also seeks to ‘increase economic freedom globally’, at a time when the creator economy continues to evolve and grow at an exponential rate.
Furthermore, by enabling more people to join the creator economy and profit from their work, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) have an important role to play in this mission.
However, the experience of purchasing an NFT remains complex for many users.
Coinbase wants to simplify the user experience to allow more people to join the NFTs community.
It’s a move that James Booth, VP Head of Partnerships (EMEA) at payment infrastructure company PPRO, emphasised can increase consumer choice when it comes to digital assets, as he predicts local payment methods may well embark on a similar approach.
He added: “Allowing people to directly purchase NFTs with cards will give the everyday consumer access to this growing industry and help it develop into the mainstream. Payment acceptance will be one of the key drivers behind mass adoption as this is the only entry point into crypto for most consumers.
“NFTs are still very early in their development and from the consumer perspective, still in the ‘early adopter’ phase. Buying them today is not a consumer-friendly experience as you need to purchase crypto, load a wallet, connect this wallet to your browser and then use one of the few NFT marketplaces.
“This year we can expect to see an uptake in this market as more consumers enter, but not necessarily a boom or massive influx. The industry is maturing and the applications that are being built are very exciting, especially the progress that we are seeing in the Decentralised Finance market (DeFi).
“New products and companies that provide consumers with increased value, when compared to high street financial institutions, are entering the market with easy to use tools. The days of tinkering and connecting manual crypto wallets are becoming a thing of the past due to enhanced regulation and maturing crypto providers.”
