Perspective: Will Facebook Make Crypto Relevant For The Underserved?

Monday, May 20, 2019

By Vikas Raj

Earlier this month, the WSJ reported that Facebook is building a team and getting its crypto ducks in a row to launch a “cryptocurrency-based payments system on the back of its gigantic social network.” Public details on the effort are thin and may have been outshone by news that one of Facebook’s co-founders is calling for the company to break up. But the fintech world is predictably aflutter about the perils and opportunities of a brand new digital coin that could allow users to hold and send money safely and securely to nearly every socially networked person on the planet.

Presumably, a key driver of this effort’s success will be WhatsApp, which by the last count has 1.6 billion active users. For the markets where we invest across Asia, Africa and Latin America, WhatsApp is particularly dominant — the rails upon which much of commerce already rides. It is not hard to imagine a world in which all payments occur via WhatsApp. We have seen what this could look like in India already, where WhatsApp payments have faced initial regulatory hiccups but are still poised to be a market-leading payments alternative, building on India’s quasi-government unified payments interface. Other markets, which don’t have India’s payment infrastructure and are more open to crypto innovation, could be next.

 

Source: Forbes (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Finance, Technology
Tags
cryptocurrency, fintech