LitePay Launches Delays Cards For Merchants

LitePay Cards for Merchants

LitePay was supposed to be a ticket to greatness for Litecoin. But now, it turns out the launch of the service would be only partial, and the unrolling of Litecoin payment cards has been delayed. However, the possibility for a single standard for accepting Litecoin, instead of ad hoc solutions and per-piece wallets, may see the asset spent more widely in 2018, as is the intention of the community.

What LitePay Launched

Even on February 26, there was a strange radio silence from the LitePay project. What really was launched was a sign-up process for merchants, with the real product to be unrolled at some point in the future.

The possibility to unroll Litecoin cards has been canceled, much to the anger of Reddit users in the Litecoin community. The biggest problem for issuing crypto-based cards comes with intermediaries between VISA and the crypto-related payment system. The rift between VISA and WaveCrest caused trouble with the TenX and Wirex cards and sent the projects out to look for other intermediaries.

Top 5 ICOs Of 2018 Which Could Go Big

But so far, there is no telling how LitePay would achieve worldwide acceptance, much less achieve it quickly. LitePay itself is a relatively small startup, trying to build its ecosystem from the ground up, with little influence right now.
Even for older ICO projects that promised to include a card, the task took months to unroll the actual plastics.
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The LitePay service would at first resemble the earlier BitPay system, which was widely used especially on days of lower fees. But during the December network congestion, BitPay raised the minimum purchase to $100, to justify high fees.

Strangely, for now, there has not been much social media noise around the launch, and the next few months will show if spending Litecoin really takes off, or has any effect on the price. LTC slid slightly in the past 24 hours, as the asset habitually absorbs bad news with relative stability. LTC trades at $218.16, down 1.73% in the past day.

There is a slight premium on Korean exchanges, and a slightly lower rate on Binance, where LTC also trades against Tether (USDT).