Meta to shut down the digital wallet Novi

Users of Novi were asked to empty their existing accounts before the due date and won’t have the possibility to deposit funds after the 21st of July.

The payment system Novi first emerged under the name Calibra in June 2019 along with the stablecoin. The stablecoin initially went by the name Libra, prior to changing to Diem, as the coin had to be remarkated because of its strong associations with the Facebook brand. Due to difficulties on the regulation’s front, Meta had to team up with the exchange company Coinbase and use the USDP stablecoin, instead of its own coin. Despite the change of plans, Meta still intended to support the Diem coin in the future, however all attempts failed. Among many other challenges that Meta’s crypto initiative faced, Novi was also pressured to cease operations by the US Senate, as the company was not seen fit to run a cryptocurrency. 

The end of the Diem Association (which was one of Facebook’s projects) and the coin respectively, came at the start of the year, as the digital assets were sold for approximately $200 million dollars to Silvergate Capital (SI), according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Although Novi reached its pilot version and operated as a money-transfer service for some time, it never reached further than  Guatemala and the USA. 

Yet Meta and Mark Zuckerberg are not keen on stopping at that. As already mentioned, the company announced its new metaverse wallet (the successor of Facebook Pay), the incorporation of NFTs on Facebook, and earlier revealed its future clothing feature for avatars. Meta has a lot of new ventures the implementation of which are yet to be seen.