British payments start-up Checkout.com has joined the Libra Association, the digital currency project set up by Facebook last year.
Checkout.com is the first payment processor to join the initiative since U.S. giants Visa, Mastercard and Stripe all pulled out over regulatory concerns in October. In recent weeks, other firms have said they will back Libra, including e-commerce giant Shopify, non-profit organization Heifer International and cryptocurrency brokerage Tagomi.
Libra was introduced by Facebook back in June as a global currency that would allow users to make faster and cheaper cross-border payments. But the project quickly drew the ire of policymakers around the world who worried it could heavily disrupt the financial system, risk potential money laundering and compete with fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar.
Checkout.com CEO and co-founder Guillaume Pousaz acknowledged that blockchain — a technology originally conceived as the network underpinning bitcoin — should be regulated when it comes to payment processing. He added that members of the Libra Association “share” that philosophy.
“In the past few years, we have witnessed from afar the birth of various digitally native currencies,” Pousaz wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “We are technologists at heart and have always been fascinated by blockchain and the potential benefits it could bring to global transaction processing.”
