> If Libra launches successfully and remains stable, those same places selling X MB of data for cash, could easily start selling Libra too.

Why couldn’t they sell prepaid Visa cards, or Venmo/PayPal (or whatever is the local equivalent) top-ups?

I get that having access to brokers that will sell a globally recognized hard currency for local cash is super useful, especially if it’s in electronic form.

I don’t get why it’s useful for it to be a blockchain, or why Facebook is the most likely company to run it successfully. When I ask people this the answer seems to be some hand-waving about regulation, but if this is hard for Venmo and PayPal to offer because of regulation, why would throwing around the word “blockchain” magically make it any easier for Facebook?

Selling prepaid visas misses the point. The issue is not that those in poverty in developing nations can't spend their money. The issue is that they can't receive my money. It's more important that I can buy a lot of Libra and hire them, and they can cash out or use it directly.

I tried using a pre-paid card to buy something online a few years back: it didn't work, was specifically declined for being a pre-paid card (I don't recall what it was I was trying to purchase, but perhaps that may have some bearing on why it was declined if the reason was they don't want to sell certain things to potentially anonymous persons).

I've never had prepaid cards declined for physical items. Abusable SaaS (hosting, email sending, telephone gateways) is another story.

It won't. Unless Facebook decides to ditch KYC and compete with government currencies themselves, it won't help anyone.

You put that beyond them?

The fact that they don't have a "bank account" in a traditional sense doesn't mean that they can't do what they want to do - transfer money to each other and make purchases using other means. The "bank the unbanked" idea that crypto-shills like so much only works for people who know nothing about these "3rd world countries".

They can't buy online, and so no one is advertising to them yet they are heavily using the Facebook platform. Facebook is trying to recruit them into the online marketplace by giving them a seamless way to spend internationally online, so that advertisers will buy more ads.

Whether or not it will work I have no idea, I don't know the markets that well. But their motives are transparent, the rest of the spiel is just "change the world" drum beating and cleaning the dialogue.

Making local purchases isn't the issue. Ordering something from another country is the issue. Good luck shopping online from Nigeria.

It's also not so much that it's impossible, but the markups are crazy.

I see mentioned a lot the problem with online shopping.. what about shipping and the other countless logistics problem with ordering stuff from Nigeria?

Are you thinking of systems like hawala?

I am not sure about Philippines, but most African countries have better mobile banking than US.

Yes, and India too. Every little roadside vendor now accepts Paytm or PhonePe or Google Pay or Mobikwik or Freecharge. The only way to get money into these mobile wallets is either by linking to a bank account, linking to a credit card, or by doing a wallet-to-wallet transfer.

But what surprises me is the extent of penetration of these wallets despite not being cash based. To a large extent, this success is probably attributable to the "glue" between these disparate wallets - the government-launched UPI or Unified Payments Interface (https://www.npci.org.in/product-overview/upi-product-overvie...), which allows you to link any of these wallets directly to your bank account.

That's not true. These days even the smallest US banks tend to have mobile apps or normal mobile banking options. All the major banks without exception do. That has been true for years at this point.

Deposits, moving money in various ways, checking balances or statements, bill pay, customer service, etc etc. What exactly is missing that is important that American banking desperately lacks? The larger banks are borderline obnoxious with the options ('features') they try push on you, for what their mobile banking offers now.

The only thing I can think of, is easy & instant account funds transfer from one person's bank account to another person's bank account (which is a structural flaw in the US system, and which PayPal & Co. fill).

> The only thing I can think of, is easy & instant account funds transfer from one person's bank account to another person's bank account

I think that's exactly what they're talking about.

> targeting the day laborer in a rural, 3rd world country, who might be enticed to part with some of their spending money for some Chinese plastic trinket that they never could have bought before, because none of the few stores in a 100 mile radius stock stuff like that.

Yeah, if that's what they're thinking they don't know too much about "3rd world countries"

One of the reasons many people are unbanked is the expensive KYC laws. Libra also need to respect KYC.

yes, this.