Having lost some of its founding members when the public scrutiny got fierce, the Libra Association has now added Checkout.com to its membership as things seem to be moving faster for the cryptocurrency project.
The Libra Association is the Switzerland-based organisation backing the Libra, a cryptocurrency project that Facebook has been the biggest promoter of since the initiative was first launched in 2019.
But since the, Libra has faced a lot of public pressure from lawmakers and regulators. They have expressed concerns about the potential impact the launch of the digital currency could have on the world economy, on competition and on countries’ ability to issue and control monetary policies.
As lawmakers looked into the project, several of the original members of the Libra Association decided to jump ship. PayPal, Stripe, Visa and Mastercard were some of the members that decided to pull out.
However, it seems like the Libra Association is growing its numbers again, having just announced that it had added Checkout.com to its inner circle.
Guillaume Pousaz, CEO and founder of Checkout.com, said that the decision to join the Libra Association was in line with the company’s ambition “mission to change the way that businesses interact with financial services for the better.”
He added that the company has long been aware of the potential benefits of blockchain, but that it has been reluctant to join any other project because “we felt strongly that regulation should form an integral part of any resulting framework, given its unique ability to protect the ecosystem from systemic abuses.”
Without proper legislation in place, the Checkout.com leadership believed “that the technological advancements alone would fail to provide the secure and stable payments infrastructure required to drive mass adoption, impeding its progress.”
Now he believes that Libra could be the answer. “We greatly value the opportunity to uphold these views by joining the Libra Association,” Pousaz said. “In the Libra Association, we found a group of peers that share in this philosophy and who demonstrated a thoughtful and realistic approach to how blockchain can be leveraged for the greater good. The Libra project holds the promise of increasing financial inclusion for billions of unbanked people, empowering them to participate in the digital economy and reducing disparities.
“It is obvious to me and the wider Checkout.com team that we want to be part of this effort and can contribute to this endeavour by bringing our unparalleled payments engineering expertise. I look forward to working with our Libra Association peers to develop this new network and help shape the impact it will have on global commerce.”
This is the latest indication that the project is gaining momentum. Earlier in April it was revealed that Facebook was looking for 50 new skilled professionals to come and work on Calibra, its digital wallet that would be used to process Libra transactions.
In Switzerland, the Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has began to process an application from the Libra Association for a payment system licence. While this marked the beginning of the licensing process under Swiss supervisory law, the regulator noted that the “outcome and duration of the procedure remain open.“
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