This is fundamentally a centralized system like PayPal. Most transactions never touch crypto. Meta/FB keeps some USDP at hand for those very few users who actually want to do crypto withdrawals.<p>Facebook has been trying to get payments into WhatsApp for a long time. This is just the latest experiment to try to find something that would be acceptable to local regulators while simultaneously extracting some value from the smoking ruins of the Libra/Diem/Calibra/Novi fiasco.
When Signal integrated MobileCoin last year (in the UK), there was a lot of uproar here on HN – some well-founded ("Why equip a slick and lightweight standalone app for privacy-preserving messaging with payments, a feature that adds bloat and will likely attract government regulation and oversight?"), some less so ("The Signal developers are just scamming everyone"). Given WhatsApp's move toward a WeChat-like app now, I think some of the criticism against Signal/MobileCoin needs to be reconsidered: Moxie et al. might have seen that coming (which I guess wasn't too difficult in light of WhatsApp's involvement in payments in India) and they are possibly just trying to stay competitive in the long term.<p>Addendum: Not that I'm a huge fan of the idea of crypto payments in Signal – I am not. But if the market (and especially the network effect of messaging apps) dictates it, what can they do? Moreover, I'm sure the Signal people looked into whether it'd be better/possible to move the payments feature into a second, optional app but there might have been architectural or security reasons not to do so(?)
> Users who are paid this way receive USDP, which can be withdrawn to a bank account in its equivalent value in US dollars.<p>I feel like I’m missing something. How is this system any different than a centralized system like PayPal or any other traditional payment system, where users have a USD balance and can withdraw it to their bank accounts?<p>If the company secretly removed the cryptocurrency backend and replaced it with a centralized database, would anything at all change for the users? Or would it be functionally identical?
If you think a bit bigger and imagine a worldwide audience (basically the defining feature of whatsapp), the initial killer apps here are remittances and the ability to build out marketplaces and stores.<p>Assume the goal is global wechat-like commerce. IMHO this is huge.<p>The regulatory interactions will be formidable because every country will want to get its fingers into this, money and who gets it is ultimately politics.<p>The crypto bit lets you work around locally broken financial systems, but a lot of negotiating with governments will still be required.<p>Privacy will necessarily be nonexistent, to get to global reach all transactions will have to be <i>at least</i> as legible as current bank transfers to involved governments. This is not "WhatsApp's fault" per se, it's just the world we live in.
Why crypto? WhatsApp users are not particular tech-savvy, why not just use Fiat?<p>The use of crypto in here just makes it more difficult to understand for the end user, or am I missing something?
I think this will get some heat from regulators.<p>Transactions can be either off-chain, or on-chain. With former it’s not much different than a database, with latter it’s becomes scammer/terrorist/drug dealer dream.<p>Also on-chain transfer costs ~$20 in a quiet hour, e.g here is a transfer of ~$250 for a fee of $20: <a href="https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7d366b14c99ca6eb457109000f637e59bb1305b6a0064f36b58f3c3677ea251e" rel="nofollow">https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7d366b14c99ca6eb457109000f637e59bb...</a><p>USDP whitepaper: <a href="https://insights.paxos.com/hubfs/USDP-whitepaper.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://insights.paxos.com/hubfs/USDP-whitepaper.pdf</a><p>Contract source: <a href="https://github.com/paxosglobal/usdp-contracts" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/paxosglobal/usdp-contracts</a><p>Etherscan: <a href="https://etherscan.io/token/0x8e870d67f660d95d5be530380d0ec0bd388289e1" rel="nofollow">https://etherscan.io/token/0x8e870d67f660d95d5be530380d0ec0b...</a>
I wonder how people will deal with this at the time of tax return, when one has to disclose all crypto transactions. Hopefully since this coin provides no gain, one can just ignore it as much as one doesn’t list all USD transactions. Surely in terms of taxes and transparency this could be a big deal
It's not like FB/Meta can't afford to participate in the US (or any other legal, regulated) payment networks and protect their end users and intermediaries. They could easily cover the cost of fees if this was a product they actually believed in and could make revenue from.
Is this jumping on the bandwagon or genuinely beneficial? I'm willing to give FB the benefit of the doubt here.<p>However, I'm a total rookie when it comes to crypto, blockchain etc. and giving a company that permabans via ai with no human fallback control of payments seems like a bad idea to me.