Major Partners Bail From Facebook’s Cryptocurrency

The Associated Press reports:

On Friday, Visa and MasterCard announced their departures from the Libra project, as did e-commerce giant eBay and payments startup Stripe. Last week, PayPal became the first major company to drop out of Libra. The exodus comes amid growing — not to mention stronger-than-anticipated — regulatory pushback against Libra in the U.S. and elsewhere.

“It’s a big setback for them but it’s not the end,” said Gartner analyst Avivah Litan. Libra’s supporters say it could open online purchasing to millions of people who do not have access to bank accounts and could reduce the cost of sending money across borders.

Rep. Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Committee where Zuckerberg will testify on Oct. 23, called Libra “a new Swiss-based financial system” that potentially is too big to fail and could require a taxpayer bailout.