has announced plans to discontinue its peer-to-peer payments service which enabled users of its Messenger app resident in the UK and France to send money to friends and family seamlessly. The discontinuation of the service is in line with its plans to launch its blockchain-based stablecoin called Facebook Coin, reports U.Today on April 16, 2019.
Facebook Shutting Down P2P Payments on Messenger
Facebook updated its help page on April 16, 2019, informing France and UK-based users of its peer-2-peer payments system on Messenger that as from June 15, 2019, the service will shut down.
The social media company further outlined that even though the service will be disabled, payments can still be made for other services on Facebook as well as donations to charitable causes and users can change the default payment method to their preferred solution. American users can, however, continue to use the service.
Reportedly, Facebook decided to the P2P remittance payments feature into Messenger earlier in 2016 after securing a license from regulators at the time, but the service failed to gain enough global traction.
Though the firm failed to mention the exact reason behind this critical decision, it could be in line with its stablecoin ambition. The social media heavyweight is reportedly looking to revolutionize the world of P2P cross-border payments with its fiat-backed stablecoin.
On April 9, 2019, BTCManager that Facebook was looking to attract heavyweight venture capital firms that could invest up to $1 billion in its cryptocurrency project.
Facebook Actively Hiring DLT Experts
Of late, Facebook has been making solid preparations to join the movement, and so far, the firm has up to 60 distributed ledger technology (DLT) experts.
Also, in February 2019, Facebook blockchain startup, Chainspace, in a bid to leverage the DLT skills of the latter’s staffers.
With the Facebook Coin set to go in six months, Mark Zuckerberg and his team have already begun holding talks with cryptocurrency exchanges. Experts have that the stablecoin could generate as much as $19 billion for Facebook by 2021 if all goes as planned.
Published at Wed, 17 Apr 2019 06:00:57 +0000
