Meta’s shutting down its digital wallet, Novi

The controversial cryptocurrency project’s last component, Novi, the company’s digital wallet, is concluding its test phase, according to a first-hand report from sources. On Novi’s website, Meta requests that customers remove their cash “as soon as feasible” because the wallet will be closing down on September 1st, 2022. Starting on July 21st, users won’t be able to contribute money to Novi, and they’ll lose access to their accounts in September. According to Meta, it will “try to transfer” a user’s remaining amount to a debit card or bank account if they neglect to withdraw it.

In October of last year, Meta made Novi’s “limited pilot” available to customers in the US and Guatemala. Initially designed to facilitate quick and cost-free transactions using the Meta-backed cryptocurrency Diem, regulatory issues compelled Novi to collaborate with Coinbase and switch to the Paxos stablecoin (USDP). Though Meta was clear that it still intended to assist Diem at a later time, by the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, things had already begun to fall apart. Diem was formerly known as Libra until Facebook’s parent business adopted the name, Meta. The independent organization behind Libra changed the project’s name to Diem in an effort to disassociate itself from the social network in response to criticism of the cryptocurrency project’s links to Facebook.

Soon after the introduction of the Novi project in October 2021, members of the US Senate urged Meta to halt it, claiming that the corporation “cannot be trusted to control bitcoin.” One month later, David Marcus, who oversaw Meta’s cryptocurrency initiatives, quit the business. At the start of this year, Diem sold its assets for around $200 million, bringing the project to an end. Diem is coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean Meta is giving up on creating its own digital assets and companion wallet. As it works toward “creating the metaverse,” Meta will use the technology it built in collaboration with the project “on new goods, such as digital collectibles,” according to spokesperson Lauren Dickson in an email to The source.