Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Defections said unlikely to sink Facebook project
Digital currency plan faces regulatory issues
Facebook faces a rough road ahead with Libra, but defections by high-profile partners are still unlikely to spell the end for the digital currency.
On Friday, Visa and Mastercard announced their departures from the Libra project, as did e-commerce giant eBay and payments startup Stripe. Last week, PayPal became the first major company to drop out.
The exodus comes amid growing — not to mention stronger-than-anticipated — regulatory pushback against Libra in the U.S. and elsewhere.
“It’s a big setback for them but it’s not the end,” said Gartner analyst Avivah Litan.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will appear before Congress later this month to talk about the company’s plans for Libra. Rep. Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Committee where Zuckerberg will testify on Oct. 23, called Libra “a new Swiss-based financial system” that potentially is too big to fail and could require a taxpayer bailout.
Libra’s supporters say it could open online purchasing to millions of people who do not have access to bank accounts and could reduce the cost of sending money across borders. It’s easy to see how attractive an alternative like Libra could be to people in countries beset with hyperinflation, such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
But Facebook already faces scrutiny over its poor record on privacy and its dominance in social media, messaging and related businesses. Will people trust it to create a new, global currency? Libra also poses new questions for the social network: Given that cryptocurrency is lightly regulated now, if at all, how will financial regulators oversee Facebook’s plan? And just how much more personal data will this give the social media giant, anyway?
Litan said Facebook can still easily launch Libra in countries with no pushback, of which there are plenty. She also dismissed the idea that Facebook needs partner companies such as Mastercard or Visa in order to keep Libra afloat.
“The only reason they want the companies is because it looks good,” she said.