Do you trust Facebook with your financial data?

bappy7 · Post by **bappy7** » Sat Apr 05, 2025 4:30 am

Project Libra: A New Digital Currency
A new project could not only give the company a positive image, but also new income. The company knows almost everything about our personal lives and can of course roll out effective services with that data. In addition to the announcement that the company is going to focus on the dating market (good for 10 billion ), project 'Libra' has now gained momentum. Facebook wants to issue its own digital currency. This ' GlobalCoin ' will be a so-called ' stablecoin ', linked to various currencies such as the dollar and euro. After the Facebook Credits died a silent death, this is Zuckerberg's second attempt at a new digital currency.

He described the purpose of his new digital coin as follows:

It should be as easy to send money to someone as it is to send a photo

The GlobalCoin
The project has been officially registered in Switzerland, the company is now talking to the American and British governments about the regulations. The plan is to make the currency available in 18 countries in 2020. The business case is of course very interesting, since a third of our world population logs in to Facebook at least once a month and, for example, in India 80 percent of SMEs use WhatsApp to sell goods. In addition, the PSD2 legislation has made it much easier to obtain payment details from consumers. And the 8.5 million websites and web shops that now use a Facebook login link, will soon be able to accept payments with one click.

Users would also be able to get paid in 'GlobalCoin' for viewing ads on the platform, similar to the Brave browser . Although the company denies that this is the case, the whole thing is inspired by similar solutions from the Asian AliPay and WechatPay , which are now more powerful and larger than the Chinese banks and credit cards.

Economic growth in developing countries
Zooming in on developing countries, you can see where the GlobalCoin project can really make an impact. Several academic studies have shown that financial inclusion (including having your own digital savings account) can significantly contribute to a country's economic growth in achieving several Social Development Goals of the United Nations. McKinsey even calculated that this could contribute $3.7 trillion to the GDP of developing countries in the next 10 years.

GlobalCoin

In addition , more than half a trillion dollars in so-called ' remittance payments ' (payments between, country email list for example, workers abroad to family in the home country) were made in developing countries last year . The transaction costs for these payments range from 8 to 30 percent . Imagine what a significant reduction in these transaction costs would do to the disposable income of recipients in developing countries. Facebook is thinking of a maximum fee of 1 percent.

Roll out globally immediately, that GlobalCoin from Facebook! Many people would say based on the above. However, we would then forget the cause of all the scandals that the company has known. Facebook is known as one of the largest 'data slurpers' and the sometimes irresponsible way in which it deals with this. Photos of fun team outings are not that exciting. But research by De Nederlandsche Bank shows that we as Dutch people do see our financial data as very privacy-sensitive. Do you want to put this data in the hands of a company that is known for commercializing your data in every possible way?

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts are positive about the project, as it could lead to mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. If just 2 percent of the 1.5 billion people who use Facebook daily were to also use GlobalCoin, this would double the number of cryptocurrency users worldwide . The project still faces a number of hurdles: from legislation and regulations to demographic issues (rapid aging of users).

For me it is just another big step in losing our privacy. Facebook's business model still has major conflicts between its own interests and those of its users. Conflicts that I unfortunately only see growing with the new services. Would you share your financial data with Facebook?