LitePay has delayed the card registration process citing “hostile actions” by card companies.
In an email sent to their followers’ mailing list, Litepay said:
“Due to hostile actions by card issuers towards crypto companies, we have decided that offering LitePay card registrations at this time is imprudent”.
The company has promised to monitor the situation and has pledged to open registration as soon as it can find a reliable product that can support it.
Although no more details are as yet known, in January both Visa and MasterCard said they would re-classify cryptocurrency purchases on their cards as cash advances, which incur higher transaction fees.
In early February, the Amercian financial institutions, JPMorgan & Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup and the British banking group Lloyds said they would impose a ban on their credit card users purchasing digital currency. There is no suggestion that any of these banking or card companies are involved in a dispute with LitePay.
LitePay had announced just under two weeks ago that the application would be released on the 26th of February. The application will allow users to pay for goods and services using the cryptocurrency Litecoin (LTC), with LitePay taking a flat 1% settlement fee for each transaction.
Using a network made up of thousands of computers, LitePay claim to be able to settle transactions almost instantaneously, which it claims will nullify any issues merchants and consumers have with price volatility.
Following the announcement of a release date on Wednesday, the value of Litecoin rocketed from $160 to $234 by Thursday morning. The surge led to $2bn being added to Litecoin’s total value and supplanted Cardano (ADA) as the coin with the fifth largest market capitalisation.
Although the coin had suffered from the crypto-slide that began last Wednesday, the upcoming LitePay release had left LTC values relatively unscathed, compared to other coins.
Whilst LTC’s market cap fell by $500m from $12.7bn on Wednesday to $12.2bn today, Bitcoin (BTC) took an $18.7bn fall, which was proportionally 6% more than Litecoin.
Although individuals will be unable to register today, merchant payment registration is still set to begin tonight at 21:00 Pacific Time. As of 17:30 GMT, Litecoin is currently valued at $222 and has a market cap of $12.3bn.