Will the eagerly awaited Libra digital currency imagined by Facebook see the light of day in January?
According to sources inside the project who confided in the Financial Times, a first digital asset ("stable coin") pegged only to the dollar could be offered by the social network at the beginning of next year.
Subject to having obtained by then a license as a payment system from the Swiss financial market supervisory authority, Finma, for which the Libra association submitted an application last April.
The Libra association does not confirm the information from the British daily, nor Novi, the new financial entity of Facebook.
Very far from the initial ambition of a global digital currency backed by a basket of currencies, Libra will therefore initially be limited to a “stablecoin-dollar” format, as it already exists in the world.
Following the outcry of reactions from central banks and financial authorities around the world, the Libra association had already reviewed its ambitions in a second white paper devoted to its project.
“
The libra will simply be a digital composite of some of these stable cryptocurrencies (…) which can be used as an efficient international settlement currency
,” said the new version of the project, published in April.
The launch of libras pegged to other currencies and the composite libra would be postponed, according to a source in the Financial Times.
Strategic recruitments
“According to practice, FINMA will not provide information on the state of the current procedure, nor will it express an opinion on the possible duration of the procedure, which is fully open.”
had indicated from the outset the Swiss financial authority.
This year, the Libra association has made several strategic recruitments to facilitate its dialogue with the financial authorities of several countries.
Stuart Levey, a former Under Secretary for Terrorism under the Bush and Obama Administrations who moved to HSBC Bank, has taken over as CEO.
James Emmett, another senior executive of the bank, has been its “managing director” since October.
For its part, Facebook, through its subsidiary Novi, is working on setting up its digital portfolio.
According to the Financial Times, it would first be offered in the United States and in certain Latin American countries.
If libra has revised downwards its initial plans, Facebook's ambition remains to play a major role in the digitization of cross-border payments, to make them as easy as an exchange of WhatsApp messages and to try to capture one. maximum value.
The network launched its mobile payment service in India in November, its largest market with 400 million users.
