Facebook has unveiled a new Finance Division to expand its finance and payment ventures. David Marcus, co-creator of its Libra cryptocurrency project has been put in charge of the initiative.
Marcus will continue running Novi, the division in charge of building a digital wallet that holds the company’s Libra cryptocurrency. Facebook has also hired Stephane Kasriel, former Upwork Chief Executive Officer, to serve as a payments vice president under Marcus.
Dubbed F2, for Facebook Financial, the division will also oversee projects such as Facebook Pay, which was launched in 2019 to allow users to send and receive money on Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger including WhatsApp pay which was rolled out in India two weeks ago with plans to roll out globally soon.
Read: Facebook Looking To Integrate Messenger With Whatsapp
“We have a lot of commerce stuff going on across Facebook,” Marcus told Bloomberg. “It felt like it was the right thing to do to rationalize the strategy at a company level around all things payments.”
Among the division’s priorities will be accelerating Whatsapp pay in India and Brazil by leaping through the regulatory issues presented in the markets.
The new division will propel the tech giant’s efforts to expand into commerce. Bloomberg noted that it’s also another push toward the social network’s wider plan of integrating its apps with individual products.
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In the past two years, the company has rebranded Instagram and WhatsApp to make their Facebook ownership more conspicuous. Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, also announced plans to integrate the company’s messaging services.
“As payments grow across Messenger and WhatsApp, and as we’re able to roll that out in more places, I think that that will only grow as a trend,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the company’s Q2 earnings call in July, per the outlet.
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