The British giant Vodafone the eighth reality that decides to call itself out of Libra Association, the governing body for the global and stable cryptocurrency project devised by Facebook. The confirmation came from both Vodafone and Libra yesterday. Vodafone has made this decision so that it can reallocate the resources previously placed for Libra towards the development of its digital payments service, M-Pesa, currently spread in six African countries and which the company wants to expand to other markets.
The dismissal, however, seems to have taken place in a friendly manner, and Vodafone has kept clarifying the reasons for the posting, removing any doubts that the problem could concern the same regulatory concerns that, apparently, worried the other members who left.
The original supporters of the Libra project
Vodafone then the last of the carousel of companies that, although supporters of the first hour, then decided to abandon the project: PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe, Booking and Mercado Pago. It is however the first reality to abandon after the association was formally reorganized in October 2019.
Dante Disparte, policy and communication manager for Libra Association, commented on Vodafone's decision: "Although the membership of the Association may change over time, Libra's governance project and underlying technology ensures that the Libra payment system remains resilient "(or antifragile as Nassim Nicholas Taleb would argue in his essay). Moreover, Libra still has the firm intention of accepting new members for the association later in the current year, and the waiting list is already quite crowded with about 1500 companies. In order to be admitted to the Libra Association, a favorable vote expressed by a majority of almost two thirds of the existing members is required.
Libra's vision, making it possible and simple for anyone in the world to make payments and transactions from person to person, the same vision that Vodafone follows with its M-Pesa service in Africa, which already offers the possibility to accept different currencies for international remittances. In confirmation of the fact that the abandonment of Vodafone, however friendly, a spokesman for the company said: "We will continue to monitor the development of the Libra Association and do not rule out the possibility of future collaborations". And not even to exclude that one day M-Pesa may accept transactions also in stablecoin, Libra included.
Meanwhile, the official launch of Libra is awaited: at the time of the presentation last year the goal was to arrive on the market by the first half of 2020, but later doubts began to emerge on the actual roadmap in step with regulatory concerns. Disparte recently observed, on the occasion of the Davos World Economic Forum, that there may be delays compared to the original plans.
