There has been a ton of hype surrounding the new cryptocurrency that Facebook wants to start. It is called Libra. Regulators and politicians have stalled the Libra project. Therefore, the social media giant has moved onto other things. They have started a new payment platform that is called Facebook Pay. It will consolidate the way to make payments across all of the platforms that Facebook owns. It is thought that this is Facebook’s way of leaving Libra behind. It is unclear at the moment if Libra is even still going to move forward. Clearly Facebook Pay is now the company’s priority.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of a Congressional committee recently. It did not go very well. Experts believe that his botched testimony sank the Libra project for good. Only time will tell if that is the case. Facebook Pay is the company’s attempt to get in on the very lucrative online payments industry. There were many big payment processing companies that were involved in the Libra project. However, all of those companies bailed as soon as they heard that regulators were going to stop the Libra project from moving forward.
There are many experts in the financial industry who believe that the introduction of Facebook Pay means that the Libra project will no longer be moving forward. The company sent out a press release that said Facebook Pay does not operate using blockchain in any way. They want the public to know that it is not part of Libra. Facebook has had seemingly endless scandals that involve data breeches and user data being given to developers without the consent of those users. Therefore, Facebook is assuring all of their users that this new payment platform is totally secure. They want people to feel safe trusting the company with their financial information.
Facebook Pay will most likely become popular. The fact that the platform has 2.4 billion users means that a lot of people are going to start using it. However, any security breaches could doom the platform moving forward. Facebook has not officially announced that Libra is dead. This means they might still hold out hope that they will be able to get Libra off the ground at some point in the future. However, even Zuckerberg admitted that it would probably not be able to launch in 2020. That was an admission that spoke volumes about the current state of the project.
