Payment giant Visa bought a non-interchangeable token from the CryptoPunk collection for $150,000 as part of its interest in the NFT industry.

It’s about CryptoPunk 7610, one of the 10,000 oldest digitized pixel images, each with its own personality and unique combination of features.

“We believe that CryptoPunks will be a great addition to our collection of artifacts that represent commerce past, present and future,” said in a conversation with The Block head of cryptocurrency at Visa Kai Sheffield.

He said Visa currently owns several vintage works of art related to commerce – including early paper credit cards and devices that merchants used to record transactions before the advent of electronic POS terminals.

With CryptoPunks “pioneering NFT technology and the wave of commerce in this area,” Visa has added a new twist on the current financial trend to its collection.

Visa believes that NFT will play an important role in the future of commerce and can help individual content creators and small and medium businesses in new ways.

Sheffield said there is clear “significant” interest at this point from merchants, brands and content platforms that want to participate in the NFT space.

“We want to start helping customers navigate the NFT commerce ecosystem,” said the company.

Visa also published a white paper on NFT to help companies integrate its into their operations.

The payment giant appeared to be “actively engaged” with a number of its customers, helping them understand ways to participate in the NFT ecosystem.