News hardware Meta: Facebook’s crypto wallet is a total failure
Published on 05/07/2022 at 19:35
Facebook had presented its virtual wallet project in 2019, under the name of Calibra. Renamed Novi in 2020 by Meta, Facebook’s crypto wallet for online payment between individuals will soon be closed permanently…
The project is not new, Meta, formerly Facebook, has had the ambition to release crypto payment features for several years now. With this objective, the American company had announced the launch of the project of a virtual wallet named Calibra accompanied by a cryptocurrency: Libra.
After the departure of several regulators and important partners such as eBay, PayPal, Visa or Mastercard, Mark Zukerberg had finally decided to revise his ambitions downwards.
To make a clean sweep of its adventures, in 2020, the Calibra project was renamed Novi.
“We thought the old name was a bit too close to the Libra payments network,” said David Marcus, former chief cryptocurrency officer at Facebook.
The stable cryptocurrency Libra had also been renamed to Diem.
These new names were not enough for the revival of the project since Novi did not meet with great success.
Novi is a payment platform between individuals, also available as an extension on Whatsapp (also belonging to Meta). The application, launched at the end of 2021, makes it possible to buy and use stable cryptocurrencies (generally backed by the dollar) for transactions between users of the platform.
Meta launched Novi only in the United States and Guatemala for a first phase of testing. The experience has apparently not been conclusive since the recent application has not won the expected success with the inhabitants of the two countries. A disappointing result forcing Meta to abort this project definitively.
Indeed, as of July 21, users will no longer be able to add money to their Novi account. Meta has also warned its customers to withdraw their money from Novi before its final closure on September 1, 2022. However, the company plans to provide refunds if users were unable to transfer the funds.
“If you have money left in your Novi account after the pilot ends on September 1, 2022, we will try to transfer your balance to the bank account or debit card you added to Novi. explains Novi on his site.
After Libra, Diem, Calibra it is now Novi’s turn to be Meta’s latest failure. However, not sure that after all these attempts, the Facebook CEO is destined to throw in the towel on payment features for his platform.
Last May, Meta rebranded its “Facebook Pay” app to “Meta Pay.” In addition to the name change, the company has expressed its desire to improve the payment system by adding new features aimed at the adoption of its future metaverse.