Dive Brief:
- Facebook on Monday revealed Facebook Financial, a new group to oversee its payment and commerce plans, Bloomberg reported. The social network put Libra co-creator David Marcus in charge of the project.
- The restructuring marks Facebook's latest effort to gather its individual products and apps under a consistent umbrella. The company plans to run Facebook Pay inside all of its apps. Over the past two years, Facebook rebranded Instagram and WhatsApp so customers know the platforms are affiliated.
- Marcus will continue to oversee Novi, the arm of the company that is building a digital wallet to hold the Libra cryptocurrency. He will also give input into WhatsApp's payments efforts in Brazil, where the service was suspended in June.
Dive Insight:
Facebook's philosophy around F2 — as Facebook Financial is called internally — is if users can make purchases on Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, its advertising will grow more valuable, and users will spend more time on its apps.
"It felt like it was the right thing to do to rationalize the strategy at a company level around all things payments," Marcus told Bloomberg.
Marcus joined Facebook in 2014 after serving as president of PayPal. As Facebook's vice president of messaging products, Marcus ran Facebook Messenger for four years before switching focus to Libra.
The Libra project began to unravel last fall when several backers, including Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe and PayPal withdrew, citing intense regulatory scrutiny. Facebook in March announced it no longer intended to make the blockchain-based token the centerpiece of the Libra project. Rather, the tech giant would support existing government-backed currencies, such as the dollar and euro, and eventually add its own token.
