Facebook’s payment plan is going to take a different turn, according to a source. It isn’t about cryptocurrency project Libra; it is about its payment feature on Whatsapp. Whatsapp has been the first app by facebook to have incorporated a payment feature.
Libra takes a toll as a majority of supporting members withdraw their support right before the inauguration on October 14, of its governing council. Paypal also withdrew on October 4, and right after, the flight did its bit. Following the footsteps, Stripe, Visa, eBay, and Mastercard abandoned Libra too with much ado. And after everything seemingly came to a closure, Booking Holdings, the foundational pioneer of many prominent booking websites, as well as Mercado Pago, the payments department of an e-commerce firm, Mercado Libre, in Argentina also retreated.
Hence, it can be concluded that even though there is an endless scope of cryptocurrencies given its placid presence in gambling, casino gaming, and other lucrative areas, it still isn’t immune to public and regulatory criticism.
Facebook has executed Whatsapp pay examinations in India among 1 million users.
With the payment service of Whatsapp, it has become feasible to transfer payments to individuals in the contact list via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) by the Indian government. Facebook doesn’t yet make a profit from transactions, although it will likely use the buying records of a user to show targeted advertisements.
It also is on its way to perform additional tests in Mexico. “The hope is to get that rolled out in a lot of places with existing currencies before the end of this year,” Zuckerberg spoke in an internal meeting in July.
Facebook’s plan to start its payment feature in Indonesia is also given special attention.
On the other hand, even after such a huge downturn, Libra Association convened in Geneva, Switzerland and elected a five-member board that included:
David Marcus – head of Calibra, Facebook’s crypto wallet, Wences Casares – CEO of Xapo, a bitcoin wallet firm, Katie Haun – partner, Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital corporation, Patrick Ellis – general consultant at PayU, a Dutch fintech firm, Matthew Davie – chief strategy officer at Kiva, a nonprofit lender.
Libra is taking a slow and steady approach towards its victory. Facebook, along with its partners aren’t that committal on fundamentals of Libra. For example, it isn’t yet able to answer what the net worth of Libra is.
And according to a report, Libra will possibly not be able to reach its targets for 2020.
Mark Zuckerberg is ready to substantiate the Libra upcoming week in front of the US House Financial Services Committee.
Libra will be the primary agenda of the meeting, but the council will likely dig into Facebook’s discreet plans of expanding WhatsApp Pay.
Libra might have become a dead-end for Facebook, but with Whatsapp pay, a whole new phenomenon of global ramifications of the monetary policies will start again.
There are a number of reasons why WhatsApp Pay is delayed in a number of nations. One is that the governments have worries around data localization. The payment procedure will need Facebook to store the transactional and customer data in the country.
The firm will be obligated to remove this information from cross border servers before 24 hours, says a news source. If the social media leader fulfills the country’s standards of data handling, it will definitely be established as a powerful payment means for its users.
