Mastercard announced on Thursday that cardholders can now buy non-fungible tokens on various marketplaces without first needing to purchase cryptocurrency.

To make this possible, Mastercard partnered with nine platforms, including Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and Web 3 infrastructure provider MoonPay to offer new capabilities. The firm said: “These integrations are designed to make crypto more accessible and help the NFT ecosystem keep growing, innovating, and bringing in more fans.”

The decision to expand its payment network was based on a Mastercard survey set to a group of over 35,000 people in 40 countries. The survey found that 45% had purchased an NFT or would consider buying one, the company said. In addition, Mastercard found that about half of those surveyed sought more flexibility and wanted to be able to pay with crypto for everyday purchases, or use a credit or debit card to buy an NFT.

This move is a milestone for NFT transactions to step into the mainstream. Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s executive vice president of digital asset and blockchain products and partnerships, explains: “With 2.9 billion Mastercard cards worldwide, this change could have a big impact on the NFT ecosystem.”

First launched in January in a partnership with Coinbase, the NFT card-purchase service would allow users to buy NFTs directly using credit cards. The payments firm also said it would focus on customer safety and protecting user data throughout the process of purchasing an NFT.