Facebook touches major payment players to invest $1B in its proprietary crypto project

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According to the recent news initially published at The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Facebook, the giant social with an active user-base of almost 2.32 Billion globally and accumulating more than $40 Billion annual revenue, has called up a bunch of digital merchants and financial institutions to raise monetary support. Efforts of such kind are being made to create its own crypto-based payment platform that could correspond its arch-rival Apple’s native payment system.

This news is the continuation of the Bloomberg‘s revelation made last year (in December) that tech-giant is working on developing its very own digital currency pegged to the USD to facilitate the consumers with an opportunity of transferring money via WhatsApp messaging app. WSJ claims that Facebook has been in talks with considerably major payment institutions, the likes of Visa, MasterCard, First Data Corp, to acquire their potential support to launch the system.

Although the company’s authorities have been tight-lipped about the project, WSJ asserts that by talking to the sources familiar with the matter, Facebook has been working to build a blockchain division within the company with a secret project dubbed as “Libra” for over a year.

The purpose of the project is to design the system in such a way that it does not only allow the users to do transaction within the platform but also on other e-commerce networks. Citing another source, WSJ notes that Facebook is looking to accumulate as much as $1 Billion (initially) for the project from VC firms. The WSJ reported:

“Facebook is also talking to e-commerce companies and apps about accepting the coin, and would seek smaller financial investments from those partners, one of the people said.”

It is not just that, once launched, Facebook plans to reward its grand user-base with portions of its proprietary coin to entice them to check out the ads or shop on the platform – the WSJ maintains.

” Facebook reportedly plans to reward users with fractions of a coin when they view ads or shop on its platform, most likely in an effort to entice people to give it a shot. If the company plays its cards right, it could have a huge userbase in no time, seeing as it has over 2 billion monthly active users.”

Although it is not clear yet that when will we see the launch of Facebook’s native cryptocurrency but according to the Barclays analyst, Ross Sandler’s estimation (made earlier this year), if every card is played correctly by the giant-social media firm, it could profit anywhere between “$3 Billion to $19Billion” in its annual revenue on the back of the crypto project.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Waqas Sattar: Waqas is a professional journalist and crypto writer. A graduate of computer science, and highly interested in the intersection of global governance & decentralized world.