NFT marketplace OpenSea is teaming up with MoonPay to enable direct credit card payments for the purchase of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), opening the doors to investors that don’t own cryptocurrency, according to reports.
The move is likely aimed at bringing in more mainstream buyers, similar to the strategy NBA Top Shot took when it was red-hot one year ago. It also comes during a busy time for OpenSea, which has made its fair share of crypto headlines in recent months.
Last month, OpenSea announced that it generated over $5 billion in total trading volume in January between Ethereum and Polygon sales. This broke OpenSea’s previous record, which was set in August of 2021.
Just this week, the NFT marketplace also confirmed that it will start listing Solana NFTs this month. It is not yet clear exactly when in April OpenSea will start listing Solana NFTs, but the NFT marketplace tweeted a short teaser video that described the eventual move as the “best kept secret in Web3.”
Solana surged on the news. NFT trading volume on Solana increased by over 80% on March 30, and the price of SOL itself also surged—capping off a near 24% price increase in the last seven days.
All NFTs on OpenSea are supported natively, and all deliveries are handled on-chain, meaning that OpenSea users don’t need to travel outside the platform to pay, and aren’t tied to using a custodial ledger or forced to use a specific token. The catch for those paying on card is that it may cost more due to added fees.
This payment method covers both primary NFT sales, including minting and initial drops, as well as secondary trading. The feature will be rolled out in phases to batches of users, MoonPay said. Those using OpenSea will still have to hold NFTs in their own wallet.
MoonPay first launched its plug-and-play service for buying and selling NFTs with a credit card in January. The move came as Mastercard announced that it was joining forces with Coinbase to enable people to buy NFTs with their debit and credit cards.
Opensea is the dominant NFT marketplace by trading volume, according to Ethereum World, and recently announced it was onboarding Solana-based NFTs. In January, the company raised $300 million in a Series C funding round at a $13.3 billion post-money valuation. In February, the platform processed $5 billion in trading volume, its highest yet.
MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright said recently that implementing fiat-based payment services could lead to broad-based adoption.
“Right now, the NFT market is limited to the hundreds of millions of people who own cryptocurrency. MoonPay’s NFT Checkout has just opened the door to billions more who own credit cards by making ownership both simple and fast,” he said, per Ethereum World.
