Facebook surprised the market with the launch of its wallet, Novi - chosing the payment corridor between Guatemala and the United States to test it, and leaving out Diem (the stablecoin developed by the social media giant).
While it is a niche pilot, the company signaled it has big ambitions for the product.
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“We are a challenger in payments,” tweeted David Marcus, head of F2 (Facebook Financial). The company plans to monetize Novi with fees for merchant payments, once it has a critical mass of users for the (free) person-to-person payments service.
Novi will use Pax Dollar, a stable crypto that has U.S. regulatory approval. Marcus said that this does not mean that Facebook has abandoned the development of Diem, which will be incorporated it into the wallet once the company gets the go-ahead from regulators.