Facebook Inc is working on developing a cryptocurrency that will allow users to transfer money on their WhatsApp, according to Bloomberg. Dubbed ‘stablecoin’, the company is still working on the strategy, including a plan for custody assets, or regular currencies that would be held to protect the value of ‘Stablecoin’.
Facebook plans to use digital currency to focus on small payments in India, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The stablecoin will be a type of digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar — to minimize volatility.
The company has been expected to do something in the financial services after employing ex PayPal president, David Marcus to manage its Messenger app in 2014. Marcus was later appointed the head of the company’s blockchain initiative in May. Facebook now has almost 40 persons in its blockchain group, says Bloomberg.
“Like many other companies, Facebook is exploring ways to leverage the power of blockchain technology,” a company spokesman said in a statement. “This new small team is exploring many different applications. We don’t have anything further to share.” Amazon, J.P. Morgan, Walmart and IBM are well-known companies testing the technology.
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WhatsApp is popular in India, with over 200 million users. The country also leads the world in remittances — people sent $69 billion home to India in 2017, the World Bank said.
If Facebook should effect this plan, it would give them an easy ride to be the largest company to embrace consumer blockchain service. That’s both in terms of the size of the business — a $376 billion market cap and annual revenue of over $40 billion — and the user base it touches.
It covers more than 2.2 billion people for its core social network, 1.5 billion for WhatsApp, 1.3 billion for Messenger and a further one billion via Instagram.