NFT Titan OpenSea to support credit card payments

OpenSea is following in the footsteps of several competitors to add support for fiat payments.

OpenSea to accept card payments

The world’s largest NFT marketplace is poised to make it easier for users to source non-fungible products.

OpenSea will now support credit and debit card payments through a partnership with MoonPay. The NFT titan, which recently reached a valuation of $13.3 billion in its Series C funding round, will integrate MoonPay’s NFT Checkout service to enable instant credit and debit card purchases, MoonPay has announced. in a friday blog post. Previously, OpenSea users had to source cryptocurrency to purchase NFTs from the market. Most OpenSea NFTs are minted on Ethereum, which has also caused user experience issues due to high network gas fees. MoonPay hopes to solve this problem “to make NFT accessible to everyone”. The rollout will be in phases and will allow users to purchase NFTs with MasterCard, Visa, Apple Pay and Google Pay.

The OpenSea update closely follows competitor Nifty’s partnership with MoonPay to support fiat payments. Another OpenSea competitor, Nifty Gateway, has long supported card payments. Although Coinbase NFT has not yet launched, it also says it will allow MasterCard payments for NFTs when it finally goes live.

As the NFT market exploded, thousands of new crypto entrants flocked to the technology. By allowing what crypto enthusiasts call “fiat” payments, OpenSea hopes to usher in mainstream adoption while solving the myriad user experience issues it faces amid the boom. OpenSea recorded a staggering $14 billion in transaction volume in 2021, and demand hasn’t slowed since, but it has come under fire following major vulnerabilities and bugs that caused users to lose their high-value NFTs. value. In the most publicized attack in February, a thief stole approximately $3 million worth of NFTs from OpenSea users who had inadvertently approved crypto transactions that left the perpetrator emptying his wallet. Among the stolen pieces were so-called “blue chips” from the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Azuki collections.

MoonPay also paid special attention to the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which is now the most sought-after NFT collection in the world. This facilitated Bored Ape sales for celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, Post Malone and Paris Hilton, bringing mainstream attention to the cartoon apes and the promise of the technology itself.

Disclosure: At the time of writing this article, the author of this article owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.