Facebook has reportedly landed Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Uber as founder members of its forthcoming stablecoin ecosystem.
Facebook has been rapidly moving forward with its crypto plans, reportedly hoping to launch its 'GlobalCoin' by Q1 of 2020. The social media giant has been tapping up major financial services players for funding to support the development of the project and fend off wild swings in volatility.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the two card schemes along with Paypal and Uber have each invested $10 million into a foundation that will govern the coin. Other backers are said to include Stripe, travel-reservation site Booking.com and Argentina-based e-commerce site MercadoLibre.
In return for their support, each firm will get a node on the network - on the face of it to ensure that no-one organisation has complete control over the currency - but also with a useful sideline of opening up unfettered access to user's transactional data.
Facebook reportedly plans to release a white paper introducing the coin and detailing how it will work before the month ends.
On the public policy front, Facebook has recruited a senior British corporate affairs specialist to front up its dealings with regulatory authorities as it pushes deeper into financial services. Ed Bowles, Standard Chartered’s European head of corporate and public affairs, will join Facebook in September as its London-based director of public policy.