Facebook hires 50 employees to work on Stablecoin; likely to begin testing from India

Carrying forward its plans to create a Stablecoin, a cryptocurrency of its own, Facebook has hired a 50 member team and most of them formerly used to work at PayPal.

While the company is trying its level best to keep this operation a closed-door affair, a report from Bloomberg details how ex PayPal President, David Marcus is leading the task force to expand Facebook’s functions deeper into the financial technology.

Marcus, under his supervision, has brought with him several big shots from PayPal to bank on the existing work harmony and effective knowledge of the segment. Former PayPal marketing head Christina Smedley will be in charge of packaging the final market product - Stablecoin.

Tomer Barel, earlier risk and fraud supervisor at PayPal will be a general counsel at Facebook, considering the intricacies of rules and regulations as well as the volatility that surrounds crypto.

Other people joining from PayPal include Meron Colbeci and Nate Gonzalez.

The 50 people team being lead by a significant number of people from eBay Inc.’s payment product PayPal showcases how seriously Facebook is planning to launch its Stablecoin - a cryptocurrency that is slated be less volatile than bitcoin and will make Facebook the first tech company to create its own currency.

The stability here is planned to bring about by pegging the coin to US Dollar or several fixed currencies altogether.

With Stablecoin, Facebook plans to facilitate remittances, transfers, and private e-commerce. The first target market to test this product is India, given the market expansion potential the country provides to the social media giant. Not to forget, WhatsApp already is testing its beta product WhatsApp Pay widely in the country.

Earlier reports had also mentioned the plans to use this currency majorly via the very product of WhatsApp Pay.

However, one concerning issue around the group’s India plans is the issues around data localisation vis-a-vis WhatsApp Pay; and the cryptocurrency ban in India that is slated to make Stablecoin product launch in India a difficult process.