Facebook Novi: International money transfers for free

[ShruteSastry]

Remittances are a critical way to achieve financial inclusion. Today, we’re rolling out a small pilot of the Novi digital wallet app in two countries — the US and Guatemala. People can send and receive money across borders instantly, securely, and with no fees. We’re doing a pilot to test core feature functions, and show our operational capabilities in customer care and compliance can serve people well. We’re also hopeful this will demonstrate a new stablecoin use case (as a payments instrument) beyond how they are typically used today.

The US-GT remittance corridor is an important one. In Guatemala, 56% of people do not have access to basic financial services, despite nearly 100% having access to a mobile phone. Money sent from abroad makes up more than 14% of Guatemala’s GDP, according to the World Bank, with as much as 90% of these funds coming from communities in the US, according to Pew Research.

This pilot uses USDP (Pax Dollar) through partnerships with Paxos and Coinbase so we can focus on testing our systems. USDP is a well-designed stablecoin that’s been operating successfully for over three years and has important regulatory and consumer protection attributes. I do want to be clear that our support for Diem hasn’t changed and we intend to launch Novi with Diem once it receives regulatory approval and goes live. We care about interoperability and we want to do it right.

Beyond the pilot, our business model is very clear. We’re a challenger in the payments industry. We’ll offer free person-to-person payments using Novi. Once we have a meaningful customer base, we can offer cheaper merchant payments and still make a profit on merchant services. Scaling Novi will take time and this pilot is a great chance for us to learn from our early customers. We want to make sure that our wallet has been fully tested before we open Novi up to more people.

We have an opportunity to change the game for so many people who have been left behind by the current financial system. I believe we should take that opportunity and I’m eager for us to start the journey.

 

More at https://novi.com

[ShruteSastry]

Source: https://www.facebook.com/800665194/posts/10166121490710195/?d=n