Reportedly Social media giant Facebook has signed over a dozen companies, including some of the world's largest corporations like Visa Inc, Mastercard Inc, PayPal Holdings Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc, to back its crypto currency project, Libra, reported Wall Street Journal. Mark Zuckerberg led multinational company is expected to unveil Bitcoin rival Libra next week, while the official launch of the crypto currency is scheduled for 2020.
Before this, companies like MercadoLibre, an argentina based e-commerce platform; Stripe, US based payments technology company; and Bookings.com (a hotel booking platform) had also decided to support the Facebook-backed crypto currency. Reports suggest Facebook charged around $10 million from each of these backers to manage their node, a framework that'll enable them to manage the digital coin Libra.
It is believed that Facebook is eying around $1 billion worth of funding by taking these companies on board. Last year, Bloomberg had reported that Facebook was looking to create a 'stable coin' that will let the users of its social messaging platform, WhatsApp, transfer money to family and friends. Stable coins are crypto currencies pegged to the US Dollar and is designed to minimize the effects of price volatility. WhatsApp has more than 200 million users in india.
