Shopify Joins Facebook-led Libra Association, Months After High Profile Members Exit

Facebook Libra has received the first new member, ever since the exit trend kicked off in the wake of regulatory scrutiny from the US.

Shopify Chief Executive Officer, Tobi Lutke, broke the news on Twitter stating they have decided to join Libra which is in line with their vision of making “commerce better in parts of the world where money and banking could be far better.”

A Twitter user raised concerns on why the company decided to do so, and how Tobi responded is quite interesting.

“We like to make decisions based on future potential instead of heard movement,” said Tobi Lutke in a reply. “Funnily enough this usually leads to us doing the opposite of the others,” he added.

We like to make decisions based on future potential instead of heard movement. Funnily enough this usually leads to us doing the opposite of the others

— tobi lutke (@tobi) February 21, 2020

“As a member of the Libra Association, we will work collectively to build a payment network that makes money easier to access and supports merchants and consumers everywhere,” the Shopify wrote in a blog post.

The Libra Association had a rocky start last year ahead of launch as US policymakers wanted the company to clear the air on some issues, which lead the company to push the launch forward indefinitely.

Regulators also grew wary of Libra, majorly scrutinizing Facebook for how it handled customer data in the past. They even went ahead and warned financial payment behemoths — Visa and Mastercard — to expect a high level of scrutiny from regulators on all their payment activities if they don’t withdraw from the Libra Association.

Last year Paypal, Visa, and MasterCard and several other original founding member companies left the association. The latest member to exit was Vodafone UK, which pulled out to concentrate on expanding their digital payments platform, M-PESA, to more countries in the African region.

The Libra Association now remains with 21 companies.

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