Social media giant Facebook is set to roll out its own cryptocurrency dubbed “GlobalCoin” in 2020, according to a report from BBC.
The news outlet said on Friday that Facebook is planning to launch the cryptocurrency-based payments system in “a dozen countries” by the first quarter of 2020 and is looking to start trialing it by the end of this year.
More details about Facebook’s crypto plan are said to be revealed in the coming months, the report said. It further added Facebook had looked for advice from officials of the U.S. Treasury and the Bank of England governor Mark Carney regarding opportunities and regulatory issues for the initiative, which is internally referred to as “Project Libra.”
The news comes amid recent reports that Facebook has been in talks with payments firms including Western Union, Visa, and Mastercard, to back and fund its planned fiat-based cryptocurrency.
The project is said to be developing a cryptocurrency helping Facebook’s billions of users transfer money to each other and to make online purchases.
On May 2, Facebook registered a new entity called “Libra Networks” in Geneva, which will “provide financial and technology services and develop related hardware and software.”
Last month, it was reported that Facebook could be seeking to raise as much as $1 billion to fund the crypto stablecoin project.
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