Vodafone Quits Facebook Libra Association, To Focus On M-Pesa Expansion To More Countries
Facebook’s Libra project has been heavily criticized over the parent’s company issues with how it handled customer data in the past. The Libra Association comprised of several well-known financial payment services around the globe, including PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Mercado Pago, and Stripe, who have already exited.
Vodafone is the latest company to exit the consortium. The news was reported by Vodafone together with the Libra Association on Tuesday 22nd. In total, the Libra association has lost eight of its founding members.
Before Vodafone’s exit, seven members of the Libra consortium had already left, including PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, Mercado Pago, eBay, Stripe, and Booking Holdings over increased regulatory scrutiny.
Unlike the regulatory pressures that forced the exit of financial payment companies, Vodafone’s seems cordial as they rechannel their focus to one of their key business arms.
Vodafone says they will divert the resources meant for Libra on its successful digital payment service, M-Pesa. The company says it will expand M-Pesa to reach more nations to add to the six African countries currently served by the mobile payment service.
Out of the 29 co-founding members, the Libra association now remains with only 21 members. Some honourable mentions of companies still under the association as of now include CoinBase, Uber, Lyft, and even Xapo.
“Although the makeup of the Association members may change over time, the design of Libra’s governance and technology ensures the Libra payment system will remain resilient,” said Dante Disparte, head of policy and communications for the Libra Association.
Like other members who have exited the consortium in 2019, Vodafone says it will continue to keep an eye on the Libra Association and it does “not rule out the possibility of future cooperation.”
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