Polish Bank PEKAO partners with Mastercard on NFT art projects

Bank Pekao S.A., founded in 1929 as a savings bank for emigrants, has grown into one of the largest financial institutions in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region and is among the top two universal banks in Poland with PLN 280 billion in assets. 
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Bank Pekao has recently entered the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by tokenising art. NFTs with elements of Rafał Bujnowski’s painting composition will be associated with 440 unique payment cards introduced jointly with Mastercard. Why did you decide to enter this particular space, and can you provide more details on the role being played by Mastercard? The project is being promoted using the slogan “When art creates business”. Please provide more information on what this means.
The metaverse, the virtual world of the future, may have its own community, its own currency and its own digital assets. It probably won’t replace relationships in the real world, but it will certainly expand investment opportunities. We already see a growing interest in the non-fungible token, which is treated as a unique digital asset representing high investment value. From our perspective, the growth potential is a factor that may be of particular interest to a group of young customers focused on modern technologies or wealthy clients.  
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As I understand, tokens of artist Kaja Renkas’s works were created for the 25th anniversary of Bank Pekao S.A. Private Banking and displayed in the PeoPay Gallery—a virtual space located in ESKA World, the first Polish metaverse environment. What does this project say about the bank’s outlook for the metaverse’s ongoing development and evolution? And do you anticipate further investment in metaverse projects going forward?
We were the first among all the universal financial institutions in the world to tokenise art. Our entry into the metaverse world, inseparable from NFTs, is a natural continuation of this activity. Now we feature an NFT linked to the work of Kaja Renkas as part of celebrating the 25th anniversary of Bank Pekao S.A. Private Banking in its natural digital environment. With this, we prove that we understand both the changing world of digital products and our clients, who will certainly explore this new metaverse space for communication purposes. Our presence in the metaverse results from our consistent pursuit of the latest trends that fit well into our strategy.
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