Facebook has launched the pilot program for its Novi crypto wallet in Guatemala and most of the United States.
Say goodbye to delays and fees and say ?? to Novi — currently rolling out in Guatemala and most of the United States on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Check back here for the latest updates on availability, or visit https://t.co/STs3PiQnvv pic.twitter.com/ESoavo5nym
— Novi (@novi) October 19, 2021
Novi is a digital wallet from Facebook that allows its users to send and receive money instantly and without fees. Here is the Novi team explaining how this works:
“Novi uses digital currencies that make sending money as easy as sending a message, starting with USDP (Pax Dollar). When you add money to your Novi account, we’ll convert it to USDP. On Novi, 1 USDP is equal to 1 US dollar.“
On October 19, David Marcus, Head of the Novi division of Facebook, announced that his team had started a small pilot of the Novi digital wallet.
Marcus went on to explain that for this pilot they were partnering with COINBASE and Paxos:
“For the pilot we are enabling people to send and receive money using USDP (Pax Dollar) through partnerships with Paxos and Coinbase. Our support for Diem has not changed. We see great value in the way Diem is designed with robust protections for consumers and controls to combat financial crime. We intend to migrate Novi to the Diem payment network once it receives regulatory approval.
“The goal for Novi has been and always will be to be interoperable with other digital wallets and we believe a purpose-built blockchain for payments, like Diem, is critical to deliver solutions to the problems that people experience with the current payment system. Imagine if you couldn’t send an email from a Gmail address to a Yahoo address, or if you could only text people with the same mobile provider as you.
“We chose USDP so that we can test our systems with a stablecoin that has been operating successfully for over three years and that has important regulatory and consumer protection attributes. USDP reserves are fully backed by the US dollar and are held 100% in cash and cash equivalents.
“This means that people can easily withdraw their money in their local currency when they choose. We chose Coinbase, which manages $180B assets on its platform, to provide custody solutions for the secure storage of our customers’ funds.”
Featured Image by “Firmbee” via Pixabay
