Facebook Inc. has signed up more than a dozen companies including Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. to back a new cryptocurrency it plans to unveil next week and launch next year, according to Wall Street Journal. The Globalcoin has been developed in secrecy for more than six months.
The financial and e-commerce companies, venture capitalists and telecommunications firms will invest around $10 million each in a consortium that will govern the digital coin, called Libra, according to people familiar with the matter. The money would be used to fund the creation of the coin.
Stripe, Booking.com and MercadoLibre are part of the project, according to the Journal, though the report does not specify what their roles are.
Facebook announced it was launching GlobalCoin last December, though the company indicated that it was looking at cryptocurrency as far back as the end of 2017. The crypto is expected to be a stablecoin that will operate within the company’s messaging infrastructure – WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
However, Facebook has been tight-lipped about what exactly GlobalCoin will be used for, though the BBC suggested that Facebook may look to retailers, allowing its users to purchase discounted goods using the cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency would be used to transfer value directly from Facebook to the retailer, cutting out credit card companies in the middle, which BBC suggests would help the retailers’ profits.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
