Facebook is looking to change the landscape of financial services worldwide and this past Tuesday, a remarkable progress was made when the company revealed its Libra cryptocurrency and Calibra digital wallet. Facebook’s goal is to enable over 1.7 billion people, without bank accounts, across the globe to take part in financial activities.
As revolutionary as it can be, a significant part of human population would not be able to take advantage of this digital payments service.
A Calibra spokesperson revealed to TechCrunch that the wallet will not be available in the countries that are sanctioned by U.S. or have banned cryptocurrencies. Custodial Wallet Providers will decide where the service will be available and where it won’t be.
This apparently means that Facebook’s biggest market, India will be among the countries where this service will be unavailable. This was later confirmed by a spokesperson. Additionally, China, Iran and North Korea are some of the countries where Facebook is banned so it’s safe to assume that Calibra wouldn’t launch in either of these countries as well.
Concerned about the “contagious” effects of Cryptocurrency, India’s Reserve Bank informed the Supreme Court about the currency’s impending harms. It wasn’t long ago when the country prepared a bill to penalize anyone “mining, selling, holding, disposing, transferring or dealing” in cryptocurrencies to a 10-year prison sentence.
Facebook mentioned a couple of days ago that Calibra will be available on Messenger, Whatsapp and a dedicated app of its own. This announcement led to a confusion in India as in the country, WhatsApp Pay is available. For those of you unaware, WhatsApp Pay is a person-to-person payments service available via WhatsApp only in India.
WhatsApp Pay is built on top of UPI or Unified Payments Interface which is responsible for millions of financial transactions in the country every month. A WhatsApp spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that efforts to improve WhatsApp Pay shall be continued as planned.
The Payments service at the moment empowers over a million Indian WhatsApp users and the Messaging Behemoth is adamant on making the service available throughout the nation.
Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
Read next: Reduced Inclination of Users Towards Facebook after Privacy Scandals Surface in a New Report
As revolutionary as it can be, a significant part of human population would not be able to take advantage of this digital payments service.
A Calibra spokesperson revealed to TechCrunch that the wallet will not be available in the countries that are sanctioned by U.S. or have banned cryptocurrencies. Custodial Wallet Providers will decide where the service will be available and where it won’t be.
This apparently means that Facebook’s biggest market, India will be among the countries where this service will be unavailable. This was later confirmed by a spokesperson. Additionally, China, Iran and North Korea are some of the countries where Facebook is banned so it’s safe to assume that Calibra wouldn’t launch in either of these countries as well.
Concerned about the “contagious” effects of Cryptocurrency, India’s Reserve Bank informed the Supreme Court about the currency’s impending harms. It wasn’t long ago when the country prepared a bill to penalize anyone “mining, selling, holding, disposing, transferring or dealing” in cryptocurrencies to a 10-year prison sentence.
Facebook mentioned a couple of days ago that Calibra will be available on Messenger, Whatsapp and a dedicated app of its own. This announcement led to a confusion in India as in the country, WhatsApp Pay is available. For those of you unaware, WhatsApp Pay is a person-to-person payments service available via WhatsApp only in India.
WhatsApp Pay is built on top of UPI or Unified Payments Interface which is responsible for millions of financial transactions in the country every month. A WhatsApp spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that efforts to improve WhatsApp Pay shall be continued as planned.
The Payments service at the moment empowers over a million Indian WhatsApp users and the Messaging Behemoth is adamant on making the service available throughout the nation.
Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
Read next: Reduced Inclination of Users Towards Facebook after Privacy Scandals Surface in a New Report
