LitePay Delay the Release of Visa Card

Litecoin’s market value increased when they announced LitePay and Litecoin Visa card. Since then the decision to withdraw the card was announced on Twitter. The creators of Litecoin blamed the ‘hostile actions’ taken by card companies towards cryptocurrencies. Earlier in the year, some card issuers pulled their backing from established cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. It seems that the refusal to support the use of cryptocurrencies comes from the concern of the values suddenly decreasing.

This spiked downtrend of LTC value, Litecoin visa card was a big deal for a lot of owners. The card would allow them to spend their Litecoin currency at willing retailers and give them direct access to the funds in their LitePay wallet, so the withdrawal of this service was a red flag for a lot of potential investors.

The release of the LitePay card could have had some positive outcomes for interested businesses. The card was only going to charge 1% on sales rather than the standard 3% charge most issuers take. On top of that, there would be no chargeback losses that plague a lot of small business owners who accept credit card payments. The LitePay card could have opened the way to wider acceptance of cryptocurrencies among businesses.

The founder of Litecoin Charlie Lee twitted:

Awesome! For Litecoin adoption, merchant processing is much more important than crypto debit cards. Using LTC debit card is not really paying with Litecoin. Merchants still pay high fees and you still have to deal with fraud. #PayWithLitecoin > #PayWithVisa https://t.co/8aOSaPCKkp

— Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite) February 27, 2018

At the moment, it is unsure if the BitPay visa card is simply delayed or whether the service will be completely dropped.