Shopify Becomes Member of the Libra Association
Nicholas Otieno Feb 24, 2020 06:00
Canadian-based e-commerce giant Shopify has announced it will become the latest member of the Libra Association's governing council.
Canadian multinational e-commerce company, Shopify, has joined the Libra Association. Shopify will be teaming up for the formation of a global payment network within the Libra Association.
The Facebook-led Libra Association has acknowledged that the Canadian e-commerce giant would be a significant partner in the actualization of the crucial economic participation necessary for Libra to become a reality.
Shopify stated that its move to join the Libra network is based on the firm’s desire to address the unsolved challenges facing cross-border payments. Shopify said: “As a partner of the Libra Association, we’ll work together to develop a payment network, which makes money easier to access and supports consumers and merchants everywhere.”
Shopify does not provide direct support for crypto payments. However, it enables its merchants to accept cryptocurrencies via payment methods through CoinPayments Beta, GoCoin, Coinbase Commerce, and Bitpay.
The firm said that its mission is focused on making commerce better for everyone, and to accomplish that, it devotes lots of time in determining how it can improve commerce in different parts of the world where banking services are not readily accessible to the general population. The company admitted that as online commerce continues growing, it is easy to forget that “the value exchange and payment of goods are not a solved problem.” It revealed that much of the financial infrastructure around the world was not built to handle the needs and scale of online commerce.
Shopify's statement revealed that improving financial inclusion, "is the reason why we made a decision to become a partner of the Libra Association. This is the step we will be taking to be part and parcel of tackling this global problem.”
Since its launch, Libra cryptocurrency has attracted lots of criticism from policymakers and regulators worldwide. Seemingly due to the intense scrutiny, Libra Association so far has lost eight of its co-founding members, including Mastercard, eBay, Visa, Vodafone, Mercado Pago, Booking Holdings, PayPal, and Stripe, which were meant to be part of the Libra project.
Since the withdrawal of the eight founding members, Shopify is the first organization to join the association. The company is a multinational commerce platform with more than one million businesses in about 175 countries. It is, therefore, poised to bring a wealth of expertise and knowledge to the Libra project.
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