New York: Facebook will debut its cryptocurrency, Libra, next week, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
The social media giant has secured the backing of multiple organizations such as Master and Visa, plus internet bigwigs such as Uber, PayPal and Booking.com for Libra.
The report says that each of these companies has invested $10 million in the currency and will monitor it independently of Facebook from the Libra Consortium.
The Wall Street Journal has speculated that in addition to taking advantage of the currency if it takes off among face book’s two billion members, major financial players such as Visa and Mastercard have agreed to join the Libra Consortium to monitor Facebook’s payment ambitions.
Facebook itself has launched the independent consortium to deflect criticism which have been coming its way frequently enough in the past few years.
Libra will be debuted on June 18, with a full launch scheduled for 2020. It is expected that Libra will be a ‘stablecoin’ which means that it will be pegged to government-issued currencies. This is thought to be have done so that Libra does not display the same volatility that other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin do.
Facebook hopes that Libra will eb used to send and receive money over Messenger and Watsapp. It also plans at some point in the future to allow its users to utilize Libra for online shopping.
It has also been reported that Facebook is looking to develop ATM like terminals where people can safely convert their cryptocurrency.Â
