Digital payments giant Visa revealed that on August 18, it had spent US$150,000 to purchase its first non-fungible token (NFT) — CryptoPunk 7610.

Here’s what the NFT look like:

Visa CryptoPunk — Image Credit: CryptoPunk

Over the last 60 years, Visa has built a collection of historic commerce artifacts – from early paper credit cards to the zip-zap machine. Today, as we enter a new era of NFT-commerce, Visa welcomes CryptoPunk #7610 to our collection. https://t.co/XoPFfwxUiu
— VisaNews (@VisaNews) August 23, 2021

The CryptoPunk collection is one of the most popular NFT collections, and exploded in popularity over the past few weeks. This led to OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace registering a transaction volume of over US$1.1 billion this year.

OpenSea has officially surpassed $1 billion in gross market volume after a record few days.

More impressively @opensea facilitated $1 billion in volume in 2021 alone!

2018 – $473k
2019 – $8 million
2020 – $24 million
2021 (YTD) – $1.02 billion

Absolutely insane growth. pic.twitter.com/NjTSxp0sqR
— Oliver Isaacs (@oliverzok) August 14, 2021

“We think that NFTs are going to play a really important role in the future of retail and social media, entertainment and commerce,” says Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa, who is an avid NFT collector himself told Forbes.

“So we wanted to understand firsthand what it takes to acquire, custody and interact with an NFT. We’ve worked with Anchorage to do this so that we can build the expertise and be better positioned to help clients navigate this space.,” added Sheffield.

“We envision there could be a future where your crypto address becomes as important as your mailing address,” Sheffield says. “In the same way Visa’s been here through shifts of commerce before, we’re really excited to help drive this new shift of commerce in the future.” The company also plans to purchase more NFTs.

“This is just the beginning of our work in this space,” says Sheffield. “We’re really excited to see what developers build and how we can help merchants, brands and platforms connect and interact with NFT commerce.”

This July, Visa also made several key hires to beef up their cryptocurrency team. With the new hires, it is clear that Visa will continue to be involved in the cryptocurrency space, and we expect to hear more development from Visa especially with regards to digital currency settlement for its clients and partners, as well as in e-commerce NFTs.

Featured Image Credit: Bitcoin News

Also Read: Here’s A Look At OpenSea’s Impressive Growth As It Surpasses $1 Billion In NFT Transaction Volume