Swiss company TokenPay announced today that they will be entering into an “extensive crypto strategic partnership” with the Litecoin Foundation which is led by Litecoin creator Charlie Lee. As part of the plan, the Litecoin Foundation and TokenPay will combine their resources to buy a stake in a German bank. According to the TokenPay official website, the purpose for buying the stake in the bank is so that it will allow the group to “tailor a banking experience specific to the needs of each individual cryptocurrency project” that the group works with, while maintaining compliance with relevant European banking laws.
What is TokenPay?
TokenPay is a Switzerland-based technology company that aims to “encourage the adoption of our blockchain worldwide” for use in payments. The company released its cryptocurrency, TPAY, earlier in April of this year for a price of around one to two dollars each. The project has seen largely upward movement and is currently sitting at a price of just under $4.50 each. This gives the project a combined market cap of just over $66 million.
One of the major goals of the project is to purchase a controlling stake in a bank. Specifically, with the announcement today, the group alongside the Litecoin Foundation have purchased a 9.9% stake in the German bank, WEG Bank AG, with a further option to purchase as much as an 80% stake.
Once they have a bank under their control, the company wants to become the premier way for customers to convert cryptocurrency into fiat currency and back. Currently, many companies find this process difficult because a number of banks simply do not want to deal with cryptocurrency. Some have stated that they feel the industry is too risky, and too prone to fraud.
Obviously, if a cryptocurrency company is to own a bank, then the paradigm will flip completely. Further, TokenPay plans to release its own “Blue Diamond” debit card that will “seamlessly integrate with the users digital currency wallet of choice, enabling users to easily load their currency of choice to their debit card”.
TokenPay Plus Litecoin Foundation
I'm excited to announce that @LTCFoundation and @TokenPay have entered into a strategic partnership to buy a stake in a German bank, WEG Bank AG. We plan to work on many exciting consumer-driven crypto solutions. Stay tuned! ????
For more info: https://t.co/K58SpQKvEl pic.twitter.com/6agmsa7wkb
— Charlie Lee Ⓜ️????️ (@SatoshiLite) July 10, 2018
Litecoin founder Charlie Lee announced in a Tweet today that the partnership between the Litecoin Foundation and TokenPay is official, and includes the above-mentioned purchase of a stake in the German bank, WEG Bank AG. Lee notes that the partnership is designed to create “many exciting consumer-driven crypto solutions”.
The TokenPay group also released a press release today, which outlines some additional details about the partnership.
In the press release, TokenPay says they will benefit from Litecoin’s blockchain and its still strong mining support. Additionally, the TokenPay group estimates that this partnership will lead to what they call a conservative estimate of attracting “several hundred thousand customers to its debit card solutions platform in the near term”. The press release did not specify if the payment card would be limited to EU citizens only, or if it would be available elsewhere.
Litecoin Low on Energy
This news comes hot on the heels of yet another recurring market dip where LTC prices have once again dropped below the $80 mark. Since hitting its all-time high in the December 2017 all-market pump, Litecoin prices have been on a steady decline and some in the industry are beginning to question what Litecoin is really all about.
While the currency project still has a strong following both in terms of supporters and miners, the currency still does not have that many strong use-cases just yet, aside from just being a low cost bitcoin alternative.
TokenPay is itself still fairly small, standing at rank 122 by market cap on coinmarketcap.com. However, if the Litecoin Foundation which guides LTC gets involved with a real bank and is available for use through a payment card, this could prove to be just the shot in the arm that LTC needs in order to keep it going on strong.