Facebook said Monday it has created a new unit dedicated to financial services to harmonize payment systems on its platform.
The new group, dubbed Facebook Financial, will be led by e-commerce veteran David Marcus, who was president of PayPal before joining the leading social network six years ago.
Marcus is one of the creators of Facebook's digital money network, Libra, and leads the team that creates a Novi digital wallet adapted to the currency.
The Novi wallet, which will be launched when the
Facebook Financial will be responsible for the management and strategy of all payments and money services on the Silicon Valley company's platform.
“Currently there are several payment features in our applications and we want to make sure that decision-making, execution and compliance are not fragmented,” Facebook said in an email response to an AFP question.
"We want to give people the option to make a payment however they want: debit, credit or digital Libra currency."
Given concerns about the security of Facebook's digital currency Libra, yet to be launched, the Federal Reserve unveiled plans for its own instant payments system last week.
FedNow gives households and businesses instant access to payments, wages, government benefits, or sales, without waiting days for checks to be cleared, the Fed said.
The system, which will not launch for the next two to three years, "will be designed to maintain 24x7x365 uninterrupted processing with security features to support payment integrity and data security," the central bank said.
Facebook's announcement last year of plans to develop the Libra cryptocurrency and payments system sparked immediate red flags for global financial officials who voiced a barrage of scathing criticism over the security and reliability of a private network.
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