Facebook Financial Will Oversee All Virtual Payment Projects

Facebook has created a new group to manage its various payment projects, including Facebook Pay, Novi, and, WhatsApp Payments.

Dubbed Facebook Financial, the new group will be overseen by David Marcus, the company’s financial services guru and existing head of its cryptocurrency unit.

In a tweet, Marcus said he would continue to run Novi, Facebook’s digital wallet, previously known to the world as Calibra.

For the effort, Facebook has brought on Stephane Kasriel, former CEO of freelancing platform Upwork Inc., to serve as a payments vice president.

Earlier this year, Marcus said he envisioned Novi becoming one of many wallets connected to Facebook’s Libra payments network.

Marcus also said his goal is to make sending money through Facebook as easy as sending messages on the platform.

As part of that mission, Marcus and his team plan to eventually build Facebook Pay into all of Facebook’s apps.

Since its unveil ing last year, however, Facebook’s financial services efforts have been met with resistance from U.S. lawmakers.

Led  by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, Congress requested Facebook suspend development of its blockchain strategy, last year.

In a letter to Facebook executives, Waters and her colleagues said Facebook’s efforts “raised serious privacy, trading, national security, and monetary policy concerns.”

President Donald Trump also dismissed Libra as dead on arrival, last year. “Facebook Libra’s ‘virtual currency’ will have little standing or dependability,” Trump tweeted.

Libra will likely get a boost from Shops, a new service that lets businesses set up online stores accessible on both Facebook and Instagram.

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