After a long, painful string of defections, the Libra Association finally has some good news to announce. A new member, retail e-commerce site Shopify, made the $25 million commitment to join on Feb. 21.
Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga told the Financial Times on Monday that important members of the Libra Association wouldn’t give a firm commitment to follow local laws in all circumstances, including know your client (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.
Vodafone has withdrawn from the Libra Association, the independent governing council for Facebook’s global cryptocurrency project. The British telecom giant said that it wants to switch gears and put the resources it originally intended for Libra into its African mobile money transfer service M-Pesa.
It’s been a pretty intense month for the Libra Association, whose stablecoin has come under intense scrutiny from the U.S. Congress and the G7 over fears of destabilizing the global financial system when it launches next year.
