By Nathan Ferguson
Seeing others take competitive advantage from it, major NFT platform, OpenSea has now added support for standard fiat payments.
OpenSea opens a new pathway for users to gain access to the top Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) present around the world. Known as the biggest platform for NFT Trade, having a ginormous value of nearly $13Billion, OpenSea intends to things much more accessible for both existing and new users, who are interested in the world of NFTs, by introducing normal fiat-based payments in partnership with financial firm, MoonPay.
Working around the Ethereum Gas Fee Issue
According to the information released by MoonPay, OpenSea will be utilizing the NFT Checkout feature from MoonPay, that will help to integrate both credit and debit card payments for the platform. Before the launch of this new integration, users of OpenSea were forced to purchase and trade NFTs with only cryptocurrencies in hand. Majority of the NFTs minted by OpenSea come from the Ethereum network and because of the network’s notorious gas fee issues, many users had a hard time trading around it.
MoonPay has now sort of eliminated that issue, bringing standard fiat payments through debit and credit cards, helping users to gain easy access the NFTs they desire. The integration is scheduled to be completed in set of phases, bringing fiat payments through popular services like, VISA, MasterCard, ApplePay and GooglePay.
OpenSea Competitors
This new integration is very similar to how OpenSea’s competitor, Nifty Gateway introduced fiat payments, by working with MoonPay, showing that OpenSea has a good eye on its competitors. Popular crypto exchange, Coinbase stated that it too has plans to integrate fiat payments, once their NFT trading service goes live sometime in the future.
NFT Boom
The past couple of years has seen NFTs blow up like never before, as thousands upon thousands of new users interested in NFTs have found their way into the crypto space. OpenSea recorded a trading volume of around $14Billion on the platform last year and as the demand keeps growing, it seems that we might see a higher number this year.
Issues Plaguing NFT Trade
By allowing fiat payments alongside cryptocurrency payments, OpenSea hopes to bring NFTs towards mainstream adoption and solving the issues users face, however there are many issues such as, bugs and hackers that have hindered this goal, leading to many highly valued NFTs being stolen and customers becoming dissatisfied with the services, forcing them to leave the trade.