Shopify, the Canada-based globally acclaimed e-commerce firm, has taken the crypto community in a blow through its official announcement celebrating its entry in Libra Association, which serves as the backbone for Facebook’s highly controversial stablecoin project, Libra. The news is like a spring shower for the Libra project, as the Libra Association had witnessed back-out from many of its earlier partners, including eBay, Visa, Stripe, etc. in the past few months. The news was announced in the crypto community on February 21, 2020.
According to the official announcement, as part of its addition to the Libra Association, Shopify will make an investment of nearly $10 Million and will also operate a node that will process transactions for Libra stablecoin after its release. Through Libra implementation, Shopify would process transactions without the payment of credit card fees owing to the fact that Libra has been designed to work between wallets with negligible fee charges. The integration between Libra and Shopify is likely to save hard-earned money of Shopify as well as one million merchants operating online shops on the platform. This served as a prime reason for Shopify’s addition to the Libra Association.
The current Libra Association partners include: Facebook’s Calibra, Shopify, PayU, Farfetch, Lyft, Spotify, Uber, Illiad SA, Anchorage, Bison Trails, Coinbase, Xapo, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Union Square Ventures, Breakthrough Initiatives, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Creative Destruction Lab, Kiva Microfunds, Mercy Corps, Women’s World Banking.
“Our mission has always been to support the entrepreneurial journey of the more than one million merchants on our platform. That means advocating for transparent fees and easy access to capital and ensuring the security and privacy of our merchants’ customer data. We want to create an infrastructure that empowers more entrepreneurs around the world,” read Shopify’s statement.
Shopify will be given the power of one vote on the Libra Association council and will be subjected to earn dividends from interest earned on the Libra reserve in proportion to its investment.
Libra had been under stringent scrutiny of the regulatory bodies worldwide ever since the news about its launch surfaced on the platform last year. Governments from across the world fear the loss of sovereignty of the native currencies in a big way after the launch of Libra, citing the widescale customer approach of the social media giant, Facebook. Also, regulatory authorities doubt Libra to play a major role in terror financing and other illicit transactions. However, Libra Association has constantly tried to convince the regulators by saying that Libra is secured, safe, and transparent.
“Shopify spends a lot of time thinking about how to make commerce better in parts of the world where money and banking could be far better. That’s why we decided to become a member of the Libra Association,” stated Tobi Lutke, CEO of Shopify.