Buying an NFT with euros: paying by card can cost you 4.6 percent

There are two ways to buy an NFT with euros. Either you first convert your money into the right cryptocurrency at a crypto exchange via SEPA transfer and then buy the NFT on a marketplace with your own wallet. Or you pay directly on the marketplace by card, Apple Pay or PayPal, and a payment service such as MoonPay handles the conversion in the background. The second route is more convenient but noticeably more expensive for small amounts: for an NFT costing around €86, the card's payment fee alone comes to €3.99, or 4.6 percent.

Which option suits you depends on three things: which blockchain the NFT you want sits on, how much you want to spend, and whether you will need the cryptocurrency afterwards for further purchases. Which platforms are still trading in 2026 and what they charge is shown in our comparison of NFT marketplaces. This guide walks step by step from your current account to the completed purchase and recalculates the fees with real figures from November 14, 2026.

What a non-fungible token is, technically and legally

An NFT, short for non-fungible token, is a token on a blockchain that represents exactly one item and therefore cannot be swapped one for one against another. One euro is worth the same as any other euro, but an NFT carries its own identifier within its collection. As a rule, the blockchain only stores the record of who owns this identifier and a reference to the content, meaning the image, video or data set.

This implies a limit that surprises many newcomers. Buying an NFT means acquiring the token and with it control over that record. Copyright in the artwork does not automatically pass to you unless the artist expressly grants it in their terms. An NFT therefore works more like a digital title deed with a built-in trading route than like the work itself.

What collectors use NFTs for today

The best-known categories are digital art, trading cards, in-game items, domain names and virtual land in metaverse worlds. There are also tickets and memberships, where the NFT unlocks access. For the purchase itself the category matters less. What counts is the blockchain on which the NFT collection was issued, because it determines which cryptocurrency you need.

Where can I buy NFTs? The NFT marketplaces still open in 2026

The number of trading venues shrank considerably in 2026. Binance closed its NFT section on July 3, 2026, Nifty Gateway did so in April, and Magic Eden now only trades Solana NFTs. Details of these closures are in our overview Three fewer NFT marketplaces. Still open are, among others, OpenSea for Ethereum and several other blockchains, Magic Eden and Tensor for Solana, as well as Rarible and SuperRare, with SuperRare focusing on selected artworks.

An NFT marketplace is not a custodian. You connect your own crypto wallet, the marketplace displays what it holds and handles buying and selling via smart contracts, meaning programs on the blockchain that automatically execute the exchange of a token for payment. If a marketplace closes, the shop window disappears, not your NFT. What a purchase on OpenSea looks like in detail is covered in our guide to OpenSea.

Ethereum or Solana: the blockchain determines the cryptocurrency

Many well-known collections run on the Ethereum blockchain. Their prices are quoted in ETH, the cryptocurrency of Ethereum, and payment is also made in ETH or in WETH, the wrapped form used for bids. On Solana, trading is in SOL. On Saturday morning, November 14, ether cost around €1,716 and one Solana coin around €68. There are also NFTs on Polygon, Base and other networks that are technically related to Ethereum and work with the same wallet.

So check where the NFT lives before spending your first euro. On the NFT collection's page, every marketplace shows the blockchain and the contract address. If you buy ETH although the piece you want sits on Solana, you pay fees a second time for the detour.

Which crypto wallet you need to buy NFTs

For Ethereum NFTs, any wallet that can connect to the main marketplaces will do; for Solana NFTs, you need a wallet that supports Solana. A software wallet in your browser or on your smartphone is enough to start with. If you hold larger amounts, pair it with a hardware wallet that has you confirm every signature on its own display. The one essential is that you secure the recovery phrase yourself. Without it, the NFT is gone if you lose your device, and no marketplace can retrieve it.

From current account to crypto wallet: the route via a crypto exchange with SEPA

In most cases the cheapest route runs through a crypto exchange. You transfer euros by SEPA to your exchange account, buy ETH or SOL there and send the coins to your own wallet. Only then do you move on to the marketplace.

Authorisation matters at this step. Since the end of the transition period, exchanges serving customers in the EU have needed a licence under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, MiCA. Kraken, for example, received it from the Central Bank of Ireland on June 25, 2025, and Coinbase from the Luxembourg regulator CSSF in June 2025. An overview of licensed providers is available in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges. The licence protects you when exchanging euros into crypto, not when you later buy the NFT.

Costs on the exchange side

Kraken's fee schedule lists a trading fee of 1 percent for instant buys, or up to $2 instead of the percentage fee for small purchases. On top comes a spread, the gap between the market price and the price you receive. This gap is built into the displayed price. Fees are lower through the professional interface with an order book, but you then have to place buy orders yourself. Every exchange charges its own fee for withdrawals to your wallet, which varies by coin and network and is shown before you confirm.

One detail saves money: always send the coins over the network on which the NFT sits. ETH on the Ethereum mainnet and ETH on Base are the same currency but not the same network. If you withdraw to the wrong one, you then have to move the coins via a bridge and pay again.

Card payment, Apple Pay and PayPal: buying an NFT via MoonPay

In its own help pages, OpenSea presents buying by credit card as the simplest route. MoonPay handles the conversion: the service converts your euros into cryptocurrency, and the NFT lands directly in your wallet. According to OpenSea, a processing fee for the card and the blockchain's gas fee apply.

The level of the processing fee is set out in MoonPay Europe's pricing disclosure: up to 4.5 percent for cards and alternative payment methods, up to 4.5 percent for PayPal and up to 1 percent for bank transfers. Below a certain threshold, a minimum fee of €3.99 applies. If you reach MoonPay through a partner such as a marketplace, that partner's own markup may be added. Supported methods in the EU include Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Revolut and SEPA transfers.

Whether the convenience is worth it depends on the size of the purchase. For a single small purchase you save yourself an exchange account, identity verification and withdrawal. If you plan to buy several NFTs, you pay the surcharge again each time.

NFT fees in a worked example: an NFT for 0.05 ETH costs up to €90

Suppose the NFT you want is listed on OpenSea for 0.05 ETH. At the ether price of November 14, that equals €85.82. The calculation for both routes looks like this:

In this example the card route costs €4.10 above the purchase price, the exchange route just under one euro plus the withdrawal fee. Neither calculation includes the spread that is built into the price of instant buys. At €1,000 the picture would be different: no minimum fee applies there, and the card costs up to €45, the bank transfer via MoonPay up to €10.

On Solana, network costs are almost negligible. According to the Solana documentation, the base fee is 5,000 lamports per signature, or 0.000005 SOL. At the price of November 14, that is around 0.03 cents, and an optional priority fee may be added. A Solana NFT for 1 SOL therefore costs around €68.36 plus the fees on the way from euros to SOL.

Gas fee, marketplace fee and creator earnings when buying NFTs

Three items appear in every NFT purchase. The gas fee is the price of the computing power the network spends on your transaction. The money goes to the blockchain's validators, not to the marketplace. A single purchase via the OpenSea protocol used mostly between 165,000 and 200,000 gas units overnight into November 14, around 190,000 on average. At the median gas price of these purchases, 0.35 gwei, that is around €0.11. The most expensive purchase that night paid 4.6 gwei, which at median consumption would be around €1.50. One gwei is a billionth of an ETH.

On OpenSea, the marketplace fee is paid by the seller. According to OpenSea's fees page, it is typically 1 percent and already included in the displayed price. The same applies to creator earnings, the share the artist receives on every resale. Depending on the collection they are mandatory or optional, and with optional earnings the seller decides whether to pay them. The final price for buyers does not change as a result, but your proceeds do if you later sell the NFT yourself.

If a transaction fails, for instance because another buyer was faster, no marketplace fee is charged. The gas already consumed, however, is gone, on Ethereum and on Solana alike.

MiCA and NFTs: what the EU rulebook covers and what it leaves out

The EU's MiCA regulation excludes crypto-assets that are unique and not fungible with other crypto-assets; that is set out in Article 2(3). Classic NFTs therefore fall outside supervision, and marketplaces need no MiCA licence for pure NFT trading. Recitals 10 and 11 do draw a line, however: fractions of an NFT are not considered unique, and with large series the supervisor may assume fungibility. For you as a buyer, this means there is neither a prospectus nor a complaints body behind an ordinary NFT.

How paying for an NFT with ETH or SOL, and the NFT itself, are taxed depends on the country you live in. Note the date, the euro price and the transaction ID of every purchase; tools that log such trades automatically are listed in our comparison of crypto tax software.

Risks when buying NFTs: fake collections, approvals and total loss

The biggest practical risk is copies. Anyone can take an image and issue it as a new collection. Before buying, compare the contract address with the one on the project's official site and look for the marketplace's verification badge, which is, however, only a plausibility check.

The second risk lies in the wallet. When you connect to a marketplace, you are not asking permission for a single purchase; many flows require an approval that allows a contract to move tokens out of your wallet. Only confirm signatures whose content you understand, and revoke old approvals regularly. Fake marketplace pages and messages promising free NFTs target exactly this step.

The third risk is the price. NFTs have no cash flow and no intrinsic value; their price arises from demand alone. It can therefore fall sharply within a short time, and thinly traded pieces sometimes find no buyer at all. A total loss is possible. Only buy what you would keep even without reselling it.

Buying an NFT: a bank transfer beats the card by several percentage points

1. Identify the blockchain and choose a marketplace: Check whether the NFT you want sits on Ethereum, Solana or a related network, and choose a venue that lists it. Fees and blockchains of the open platforms are in our comparison of NFT marketplaces.
2. Convert euros cheaply: From your second purchase onwards, or from a few hundred euros, an account at an exchange with a MiCA licence and SEPA deposits pays off. You can compare fees and payment methods in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.
3. Secure your wallet: Keep the recovery phrase offline and confirm larger purchases on a separate device. Suitable models are listed in our hardware wallet comparison.

(As of November 14, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)