The Litecoin Foundation, a non-profit organization helping promote LTC, announced late on Tuesday (June 18, 2019) that it was to launch a debit card that will enable users to spend their cryptocurrency online or in physical store locations.
In partnership with Bibox Exchange and Ternio, the blockchain technology enterprize group, the Litecoin Foundation said the special edition card will leverage the existing “Blockcard” platform built by Ternio.
Helping propel crypto adoption
The Litecoin Foundation said on its blogsite:
[We] want to give crypto holders the ability to spend cryptocurrency with the same ease as traditional credit cards. Through this collaboration, these three companies will help propel the adoption of crypto spending in everyday life.
Bibox, the exchange, will act as a custodian of the card holders’ funds and will help route the deposits and spending for users by leveraging more than $200 million worth of cryptocurrency trading volume.
Meanwhile, Ternio’s blockchain technology platform will be able to carry out transactions in Litecoin, and the native tokens of both Bibox (BIX) and Ternio (TERN). Thanks to a partnership with Visa, the debit card can be used at any card terminals that accept Visa.
Growth Industry
The Litecoin Foundation joins a growing roster of crypto and blockchain companies to release physical cryptocurrency cards. These include the Shift card issued by the Coinbase exchange and the CryptoPay Bitcoin debit card.
Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin and managing director at the Foundation, said:
This is an exciting partnership for us as it furthers the Litecoin Foundation’s mission to create more use cases for spending Litecoin in everyday life. Leveraging Ternio’s BlockCard platform with Bibox’s exchange engine gives Litecoin holders unparalleled access to use their LTC at merchants around the world.
It is hoped the Blockcard project will be a greater success than the Foundation’s previous foray into card payments. Having gone live in February 2018, LitePay was abandoned the following month due to the “negative perception and drastic actions card issuers have towards cryptocurrency companies”.
Litecoin Foundation said that the Blockcard would be issued to US customer first, going worldwide soon thereafter. There were no details on when the card would go live: both Litecoin and Bibox said they would notify their US users on how to register.
