The curtain on Meta Platform’s stablecoin project will fall after it’s been around for some time as a tool for money transfer.
The social media platform announced that the Novi digital wallet pilot will end on September 1 and advised all users to withdraw funds at the earliest at their convenience. No deposits will be allowed in the Wallet after 21 July, and users’ transaction history and other data will be inaccessible from 1 September.
The Novi app will be removed from the App Store. However, Novi’s technology developed over several years will have a place in Meta’s Metaverse plans, the company explained. bloombergHas already tested non-fungible tokens in its Web3 efforts.
Meta’s foray into digital currencies was initiated in 2018 by David Marcus, who left the company in November 2021, and Morgan Beller, a former partner of Andreessen Horowitz.
Initially named Libra, the project aims to help people store, transfer and spend money internationally for low fees. Unlike bitcoin, Libra will be backed by low-risk assets, including US Treasuries and bank deposits.
The project attracted major early backers including Uber, Spotify, Vodafone, Visa and Mastercard. To allay regulators’ fears about the project’s ties to Facebook, Meta’s previous namesake, Marcus and Beller, created the Libra Foundation in Switzerland, of which Facebook was a member.
But Marcus was given the cold shoulder when he tried to woo Washington regulators in 2019. Prominent politicians voiced distrust of Facebook, and soon, some early supporters started freaking out.
Shortly thereafter, Libra was renamed Diem, and Facebook’s digital wallet, formerly Calibra, became Novi.
Diem said the US dollar would support the newly designated currency. A pilot was planned for spring 2021 that would release a small amount of dime and launch the Novi.
But the US Treasury said “no,” and Marcus launched the Novi Wallet pilot with stablecoin Paxos (USDP) in October 2021, with plans to migrate to the Diem payment network.
The latter never materialized, and Diem’s assets were sold to Silvergate Capital this January. Silvergate will launch its stablecoin project later this year using Diem’s assets.
WhatsApp Payments ready to be disabled
Novi Wallet caters to users in the United States and Guatemala. The local currency can be purchased with a debit card and sent to the wallet, where it will be stored in USDP. From there, users can send funds to another wallet. The recipient can withdraw money in his/her local currency.
After that, Meta launched Novi for WhatsApp in the US, where payments can take place over an encrypted chat.
Novi will no longer be available on WhatsApp after the September 1 deadline.