Facebook's Novi digital wallet shutting down

Meta's long quest to support a digital currency suffered another blow, as the company has sent a notice to users that the Novi wallet will no longer be available.

Meta's Novi message says the Novi app and the Novi feature on WhatsApp will be cut off on September 1, and users will no longer be able to add money to their accounts as of July 21. Novi, which launched a pilot in 2021, was connected to Diem, a Facebook-affiliated stablecoin that was announced as Libra in 2019.   

Libra underwent several changes due to international regulatory pressure, changing its name to Diem and eventually moving its original base from Switzerland to California. Diem also changed its model from using a revolving group of currencies to back its stablecoin to relying solely on the U.S. dollar. 

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Most of these changes positioned Facebook as part of a broader project instead of Diem being a Facebook-controlled digital currency. Despite the revisions, the political pushback continued, with Novi itself coming under fire from a group of Senators in late 2021. 

Novi was designed to support Diem transactions but was running its pilot using the Pax Dollar stablecoin while waiting for full regulatory approval for Diem. Novi was designed to support both cryptocurrency payments and more traditional services such as peer-to-peer transfers. 

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In an earlier interview, former Facebook blockchain lead David Marcus said Novi and Diem would provide the basis for a new open payment protocol that would extend digital payments to more markets quickly. 

Marcus resigned from Meta in November 2021 to focus on a new startup. Meta sold Diem's assets to Silvergate Bank in early 2022. Silvergate, which specializes in cryptocurrency and was part of the Diem project, still plans to develop Diem.Meta referred a request for comment to a blog detailing Facebook Pay's rebranding to Meta Pay, and Meta Pay's strategy to build payment use cases for the metaverse.