A group of organisations have announced that they are pulling from Facebook’s digital currency project, Libra.
Following PayPal’s withdrawal, financial giants Mastercard and Visa both stated they will no longer involve themselves with the initiative.
In a statement, Visa explained: “Visa has decided not to join the Libra Association at this time.
“We will continue to evaluate and our ultimate decision will be determined by a number of factors, including the Association’s ability to fully satisfy all requisite regulatory expectations.”
Furthermore, Latin American payments firm Mercado Pago, eBay and fintech startup Stripe have all announced they will abandon the Libra Association setup.
Of the six payments-related firms who originally were involved with the association, only one now remains – Dutch-based PayU.
“We highly respect the vision of the Libra Association,” eBay said in a statement.
“However, eBay has made the decision to not move forward as a founding member. At this time, we are focused on rolling out eBay’s managed payments experience for our customers.”
Facebook’s head of Calibra, David Marcus, took to Twitter to thank Visa and Mastercard’s contributions and before acknowledging “change of this magnitude is hard.”
The digital currency project has faced immense pressure from a range of regulatory bodies around the world including the US Congress.
This follows France declaring it would block developments of Libra in Europe and the Bank of England stating the currency “would need to meet the highest standards of resilience and be subject to appropriate supervisory oversight.”
