Mastercard U.K. Issues a José Mourinho NFT in Giveaway

On Thursday, global financial payments service provider Mastercard, announced it too had jumped on the NFT bandwagon. The giant has created its first-ever NFT in partnership with Mastercard’s global ambassador and popular football coach, José Mourinho.

The unique NFT that the company has minted is an animation of a digital football with Mourinho’s signature on it. Mastercard’s first non-fungible token will be hosted on a company-owned server and backed by their proprietary technology.

The announcement was made by Mastercard’s U.K. branch. Cardholders in the Kingdom can take part in a raffle to win this rare NFT. The deadline to sign up for the raffle is September 30 which leaves about two weeks before the lucky winner will be revealed. Details on how the price can be ‘claimed’ will be shared by Mastercard’s sponsorship team after the prize draw in an email to the winner.

Mourinho’s NFT is Mastercard’s most recent move in the world of digital assets and its first in the NFT space.

Just last month, fierce competitor, Visa, dabbled into NFT after purchasing its first NFT to be added to its art collection.

Having acknowledged that digital assets are becoming an important part of the global payments systems and networks, Mastercard entered the crypto space in 2020. Since then it has already made big moves. It has teamed with numerous crypto exchanges on crypto cards. In July, a corporate program, Start Path, for Blockchain and crypto startups, was launched.

Most recently, the payments giant disclosed it had bought blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace. Ajay Bhalla, Mastercard’s president of Cyber & Intelligence, said about the acquisition:

“Digital assets have the potential to reimagine commerce, from everyday acts like paying and getting paid to transforming economies, making them more inclusive and efficient. With the rapid growth of the digital asset ecosystem comes the need to ensure it is trusted and safe. Our aim is to build upon the complementary capabilities of Mastercard and CipherTrace to do just this.”