161–170 of 287 posts
My immediate gut reaction to this entire thing (and again, this is only a personal viewpoint not held by others) is along the lines of: What could go wrong with giving one of the most shady corporations on the planet the permission to print its own currency?
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Not to defend them, but this is exactly what happens to all non cash transactions. Which you kind of have to do to with any sizeable quantity of money (say over 100k) for practical reasons, like theft.
True. This is exactly the problem with non cash transactions. Every single transaction, no matter how small, is recorded forever and shared with several governments and secret services. I never signed up for this. This is why we need cash and why they are fighting it.
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We have an app called mobile pay in Denmark, which I guess is similar to Apple Pay in that you link a credit card and it lets you send money to friends or pay for stuff. It’s owned by our banks and it works most places a credit card wouldn’t, like in small stores that can’t really afford to have a credit card terminal. That’s it’s main uses, sending money to friends or buying things. Only they also have an API for th…
This seems doable without Libra. I'm in Australia and my local transfers from the bank app (ING) are both free and instant. At least to banks that joined Osko. That sorts out pretty much all simple/tiny transfers. If Libra can guarantee international transfers for free, I expect that fee will also go away from the banks.
Not sure about the last one though because Visa/Mastercard seem to be extremely entrenched in the industry, as far as I can tell they have completely replaced any other debit card system.
EDIT: To your last point. I think the problem with fee's is rather that you need to convert currencies when you do global transactions. Banks could offer this at a loss but nonetheless libra has an edge here.
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We have an app called mobile pay in Denmark, which I guess is similar to Apple Pay in that you link a credit card and it lets you send money to friends or pay for stuff. It’s owned by our banks and it works most places a credit card wouldn’t, like in small stores that can’t really afford to have a credit card terminal. That’s it’s main uses, sending money to friends or buying things. Only they also have an API for th…
This seems doable without Libra. I'm in Australia and my local transfers from the bank app (ING) are both free and instant. At least to banks that joined Osko. That sorts out pretty much all simple/tiny transfers. If Libra can guarantee international transfers for free, I expect that fee will also go away from the banks.
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This seems doable without Libra. I'm in Australia and my local transfers from the bank app (ING) are both free and instant. At least to banks that joined Osko. That sorts out pretty much all simple/tiny transfers. If Libra can guarantee international transfers for free, I expect that fee will also go away from the banks.
The problem is that every country seems to have its own system. In Belgium it's Bancontact, in Portugal it's MBWay, etc. I'm not sure they have anything that works internationally and instantly.
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It isn’t an Official Facebook Announcement though. Think of it more like a Medium post.
You know, when the message is "this is not a facebook product", because some people confused about it and you post an "unoffical" announcement on facebook, then maybe it's not a good PR.
I'm pretty certain WordPress is all about blogging...
So if even Libra's team isn't capable of posting on their own website, but instead have to "reach out" to Facebook, it isn't too far fetched to assume that they're sitting in Facebook's premises to begin with.
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> If Libra launches successfully and remains stable, those same places selling X MB of data for cash, could easily start selling Libra too. Why couldn’t they sell prepaid Visa cards, or Venmo/PayPal (or whatever is the local equivalent) top-ups? I get that having access to brokers that will sell a globally recognized hard currency for local cash is super useful, especially if it’s in electronic form. I don’t get why…
It won't. Unless Facebook decides to ditch KYC and compete with government currencies themselves, it won't help anyone.
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When you're talking about controlling money, politics matter more than "technical merit". Libra is invite only and they invited their business friends. Libra consortium is based in Switzerland, so the businesses involved have guaranteed essentially zero government oversight. Libra's owners have complete control over how much currency, the currency exchange rate, and even inflation rates (note that inflation is actual…
> Libra is invite only and they invited their business friends. That's a big assumption. They were able to get their business friends to sign on, probably because they are already friends. I'm sure they asked a lot of other groups that were more hesitant, it would have made the initial announcement much more powerful. Also important to note non-profits, NGOs, and universities are included, and they don't have to pay…
In theory, you can do that. In practice, most people will have a Calibra account, tied to their FB account, and a pinky promise from Zuckerberg that they won't abuse that data.
I'm asking this in all seriousness. Why would anyone want to use Libra? Let's say a consumer wants to buy something. They can either pay with "normal" money in one step or they can use their phone to convert their money into Libra and then make the purchase with Libra. Why would they go through the extra step(s)? Am I to believe that the benefit is "lower transaction fees"? Because if so, Libra doesn't have a chance.…
* Have 25 separated accounts or savings goals
* Share any bank account (or savings goal) with anyone (using bunq)
* On the fly couple my passes to any of the accounts
* Use NFC on my Android phone to pay
* Have a website where people can transfer me money coupled to any account
* Make payment request that are (when accepted) in my account in seconds
* Make 5 virtual MasterCard to route online payments to different accounts
* Choose what they do with my savings to generate interest (I have it set to "invest in green companies")
They are mobile first (the app is first class) but they have an API (and an open source desktop client as a result). All this is more expensive than traditional banks (I pay 8 euro a month) but they do not invest in shady things and promise to respect my privacy. I imagine Libra will do the same and more (but for the privacy part). It will be more like an ecosystem.
Not that I want it. I completely agree with all the sentiments here. I chose bunq because they have the same ideology as I do.
I'm asking this in all seriousness. Why would anyone want to use Libra? Let's say a consumer wants to buy something. They can either pay with "normal" money in one step or they can use their phone to convert their money into Libra and then make the purchase with Libra. Why would they go through the extra step(s)? Am I to believe that the benefit is "lower transaction fees"? Because if so, Libra doesn't have a chance.…
There are millions of people around the world that are unbanked. Especially in 3rd world countries, they get on the internet by buying the cheapest possible smartphone and data with cash. I was just in the Philippines, and I saw places selling access to only Facebook and WhatsApp, in increments of 30MB of data, for cash. The problem for Facebook is that these people can't buy anything online, because they don't have…