Vodafone has become the latest firm to pull support from the Libra Association, the entity managing the Libra cryptocurrency dreamt up by Facebook. Following concerns by various bodies, the Libra Association lost the support of Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, eBay, and Stripe; now Vodafone has backed away too.
Commenting on the matter, a Vodafone spokesperson said:
“Vodafone Group has decided to withdraw from the Libra Association. We have said from the outset that Vodafone"s desire is to make a genuine contribution to extending financial inclusion. We remain fully committed to that goal and feel we can make the most contribution by focusing our efforts on M-Pesa.”
In an attempt to save face, Dante Disparte, head of policy and communication at the Libra Association said that the make-up of the association will change over time as partners come and go but that the governance and technology ensure “the Libra payment system will remain resilient.”
Libra was announced last summer and slated for a 2020 release. The cryptocurrency would have allowed users to send money to friends and family around the world with little or no fee; remittance services, which serve a similar purpose, tend to have a fee attached to each transaction. Following the withdrawal of backers in October, Facebook said that it was looking at alternative implementations in order to appease regulators; Vodafone’s withdrawal could suggest that Facebook is on a trajectory that will cause further pushback from regulators, though.
Source: BBC News