Polygon is partnering with neo-banking app Hi and Mastercard to launch the first personalized NFT debit card. Holders of the new card will be able to spend their crypto and accumulate Spend Rewards of up to 10%. 

Polygon with Hi and Mastercard to launch personalized NFT debit card

Ethereum’s second layer, Polygon, is partnering with neo-banking app Hi and Mastercard to jointly launch the new personalized NFT debit card. Here is Hi’s announcement:

Today, we’re so proud to announce our collaboration with @PolygonStudios, allowing users to easily generate an NFT, using their favorite image, to customize a Debit Mastercard.

The best part? It’s a gasless minting experience.

Go to https://t.co/8qgW2SA0DZ pic.twitter.com/gcWjOs6XfL

— hi | Web 3 Neo-Banking (@hi_com_official) December 19, 2022

Basically, Polygon wallet holders will be able to personalize their new Mastercard debit card with a favorite image, in the NFT format. Not only that, the card will be able to be used to spend cryptocurrency and fiat at more than 90 million Mastercard merchants scattered around the world. 

Another additional service for holders of the new NFT debit card residing in Southeastern Europe (SEE) and the United Kingdom is to earn Spend Rewards of up to 10%, getting discounts on up to 15 digital subscriptions. 

To enter, simply download the Hi app and create a free account, select the Silver or higher card level, and choose the NFT with which to personalize your card. 

Polygon with Hi for Mastercard’s new NFT debit card

Polygon‘s involvement in the collaboration supports the mint of NFTs for the new debit card, which will be done free of charge. This means that program participants will not have to pay any transaction gas fees. 

In this regard, Sean Rach, Hi’s co-founder, said:

“The team at Polygon are true blockchain pioneers, we are delighted to be partnering with them to explore new frontiers of Web3, particularly in the banking and payments space.”

Last September, Mastercard and Hi had already partnered, releasing the first customizable NFT debit cards, narrowing the field for blue-chip collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks. 

Much like at that time, enrollment to obtain the NFT debit card is now achieved by staking one’s Hi tokens. 

And indeed, at the time of writing, the HI token is worth $0.022, while subscriptions start from staking 10,000 HI for Silver (the equivalent of $220), 100,000 HI for Gold (the equivalent of $2,200), 1 million HI for Platinum (the equivalent of $222,000), and finally, 10 million HI for Diamond (the equivalent of over $2 million). 

Everyone crazy about Polygon

The present collaboration is just the umpteenth in a long series involving the Polygon blockchain, precisely with regard to NFTs. 

In December alone, Polygon was chosen by former US President Donald Trump for his NFT collection of digital cards showing him as a superhero, astronaut and more. 

Not only that, LGND and Warner Music have also joined Polygon’s list of partners to create the LGND Music platform dedicated to NFT collectibles from artists selected by WMG. The new platform will be launched in January 2023. 

Ethereum’s second-layer blockchain was then also chosen in the past by Reddit to give its users the ability to mint collectible avatars on Polygon. The result was crazy, earlier this month, it seems that the mint set a record and the number of Reddit NFT holders went from 3.5 million to 4.5 million in just over a month.

Hi, the innovative financial platform for both crypto and fiat, announced two days ago the launch of a new debit card in partnership with Mastercard with NFT personalization, with a number of unique benefits. 

Hi and Mastercard partnership gives birth to first NFT debit card

Eligible cardholders will be able to customize the face of their card with an NFT avatar they verifiably own and spend at more than 90 million locations worldwide where Mastercard is accepted.

https://t.co/zIMja4LYak

— Blockworks (@Blockworks_) September 26, 2022

This is the first case of a personalized NFT debit card, representing yet another step forward in an industry, which although down slightly from the veritable boom made in 2021, continues to intrigue and interest giants in finance, fashion, sports and technology.

In a blog post dated 25 September, the crypto and fiat app, Hi, confirmed its new partnership with Mastercard to launch NFT customizable debit cards, offering users the ability to design their own cards with NFT avatars. 

In the same post, the company also lists a whole range of benefits such as the ability to get back up to 10% of what they spend or the ability to choose from a hundred digital subscriptions.

Sean Rach, co-founder of Hi, said:

“Not only do the NFT cards look amazing, this is a great way for people to show which online community they belong to, but in the real world. The flexibility to spend fiat, stablecoins or other crypto, combined with attractive financial and lifestyle rewards, makes us confident that our card is a game-changer in the market.”

The features of the new NFT card

The new debit card from the Hi company will give users the opportunity to seamlessly spend both fiat and digital resources, the Hi token, BTC, ETH and USDT, at more than 90 million merchants accepting Mastercard payments.

The new NFT personalized debit card will also enable its members in both the UK and Europe to be able to deposit their salaries directly into their NFT personalized card through their banks and split fiat into their favorite cryptocurrency.

Christian Rau, Senior Vice President, Crypto and Fintech Enablement at Mastercard, said:

“As consumer interest in crypto and NFTs continues to grow, we are committed to making them an accessible payments choice for the communities who wish to use them. We are proud to be working with Hi to continue to drive innovation in the market and enable these customizable cards together with the safety and security you’d expect from Mastercard.”

As detailed on Hi’s website, the new debit card will be available in six variants with a range of benefits, depending on the level of membership that is chosen. 

The Hi token

Membership is obtained by staking Hi’s proprietary token and starts from a minimum equivalent amount of 10 euros.

Hi’s new NFT-branded cards will also have the option to opt for the feature: buy now, convert later. 

This means that it will not be necessary to convert digital assets immediately into fiat. In this way, this applied functionality will allow customers not to miss out on potential returns from the cryptocurrency market.

In June, Mastercard had announced the launch of a service for digital payments to purchase NFTs. 

This new agreement with Hi represents a further step by the financial giant into the Non-Fungible Token and Web3 ecosystem.

In an announcement on its website, Mastercard stated that it is ready to launch a service for the purchase of NFTs. 

Mastercard’s project

The project that the company has been working on for months would now be in the home stretch and would allow the approximately 2.9 billion users to make purchases directly with their card, without first having to make a digital currency purchase.

“These integrations are designed to make crypto more accessible and help the NFT ecosystem keep growing, innovating and bringing in more fans”.

Mastercard said it has partnered with several NFT marketplaces, namely Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway and Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay.

“We’re working with these companies to allow people to use their Mastercard cards for NFTs purchases, whether that’s on one of these companies’ NFT marketplaces or using their crypto services. With 2.9 billion Mastercard cards worldwide, this change could have a big impact on the NFT ecosystem”,

reads the company statement.

In recent months, the company had surveyed countries around the world on the use and awareness of NFTs. According to the survey, about 45% of the sample said they were interested in buying NFTs, or had already done so.

Mastercard and NFT patents

In May of this year, Mastercard filed around 15 NFT-related and metaverse patents in the US. Last year, a project was launched to offset carbon emissions with NFTs.

Visa, Mastercard‘s big rival in the electronic payments sector, has also been working for months on NFT-related projects, such as the program launched at the beginning of the year to support independent artists and small businesses to increase their revenue through NFTs.

“We believe the process of buying an NFT needs to be easier and safer. When that happens, customers get the things they want with less stress and uncertainty. For NFT creators, these changes grow their potential customer base to millions more people all over the world”,

reads the Mastercard website.

The project will also see the implementation of the company’s full suite of capabilities to strengthen customer security, giving people similar protections to those they enjoy when they transact in a shop or online with a Mastercard card.

“We’re using our cybersecurity tools to boost safety and protect user data for purchases people make using a Mastercard card”.