A top Facebook executive has said the social-media giant is ready with its digital wallet, but did not give an exact timeline as to when it would come to the market.
The offering is called the Novi wallet, and has been under development for more than two years, said David Marcus, the head of Facebook Financial, which developed the wallet as well as Facebook Pay.
He said Novi would start in a small number of countries as it “cannot operate in specific jurisdictions until it receives appropriate licensing and complies with local regulations and standards.”
In a post on Medium, he described the Novi wallet as “an interoperable digital wallet that will enable people, and eventually small businesses, to move money around domestically and internationally in a quick and affordable way.”
He said about regulatory permissions for the wallet: “In the US, we have secured licenses or approvals for Novi in nearly every state.”
Marcus, however, added that they would not “launch anywhere we have not yet received such clearances.”
Marcus said about the scaling of the app: “People will have to make an affirmative choice to open a Novi account, no matter how long they’ve been using Facebook.”
On security and privacy, he said: “As part of creating a new account, Novi requires full customer due diligence, including identification through the uploading of a government issued ID, so onboarding new customers will take time.”
Rubbishing criticism that Facebook should not enter the financial market, he said the social media platform had already been operating Facebook Pay with a certain degree of success since 2009.
He added: “We have thriving person-to-person payments products at scale in the US and abroad, and we’re properly regulated to do a lot more.”
He also said: “People and businesses in over 160 countries use our platform to make payments in 55 currencies. People can shop, make in-game purchases, donate, and purchase events across our family of apps.”