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Comment by krn | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't Facebook just get something like the UK's Electronic Money license? That's how TransferWise operates without being a bank.

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Even if the regulators let them get away with that, nobody in Europe is particularly in need of a cryptocurrency for moving money around Europe, we have near-instant money transfers for free (or close to it) through our banks.

I guess they could go for the remittances market, but that's really not where I see Facebook wanting to go.

Well, I still think that email is good enough medium for personal communication, but most of the people I know have replaced it with Messenger.

The same might happen with money transfers, if Messenger becomes another WeChat, just outside of China.

From the legal perspective, could Facebook be like Coinbase, but with a single currency?

Messenger isn't all that popular outside of north america. Doesn't matter how much money transfer options you add to a program if nobody is using it. I do wonder what happens if any non WeChat thing starts going for banking type functionality (legal or not).

Multiple search results lead me to believe Facebook Messenger is the second most popular messaging app after WhatsApp.

Are you able to provide references supporting your claim?

Sure but you could plug that into google as well you know. Here is the first hit: https://www.messengerpeople.com/global-messenger-usage-stati...

Edit: oddly enough, that hit wasn't the one where I read about it last week... But any page with sources works I suppose.

Doesn’t that link claim 1.3 billion Facebook Messenger users?

How does that support your claim?

Ugh stop turning everything into an American lawyer singularity. I said FB Messenger isn't very popular outside of NA and it isn't. What more do you want from me.

Here is a picture, convince yourself: https://www.messengerpeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/w...

There is north america, a few african countries, france and a few eastern European countries and australia. The rest is practically WhatsApp except for china which is WeChat.

I disagree with your interpretation of the evidence.

Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram are all owened bu Facebook. Facebook is already working on merging them into a single app, to be rebranded in the near future.

WhatsApp and Instagram have huge popularity outside of North America

This is correct for EU & Latam

I get their desire to integrate Messenger and WhatsApp, but are they really trying to force Instagram into that mix too?

I’ve used WhatsApp since before FB acquired them but this is sounding like it’s going to get turned into a clusterfuck of stuff I have no interest in.

They are building a common protocol for messaging to be used interoperably, from what I have read. The apps themselves will likely remain separate from a user perspective, most likely

Oh, that's neat.

Is it easy for an individual to set up like, a program to automatically do money transfers that way, in a for-profit way?

Because if so, that's pretty cool.

I mean, I understand that most people don't particularly want to do that, but I still think it could be cool to have it as an option.

If your bank provides an API, sure.

This fact is only an effect of the EU, it's a single banking system. That's like saying we don't need a cryptocurrency system in the US because it's easy to move money from California to New York :/

Is it? Last I checked it took days and cost money.

But it isn't.

US don't have sepa or psd-2

Try opening a corporate bank account these days. Will take you 6-12 months easily

I opened one about 2 years ago and don’t think it took more than a few days (it was annoying though, several visits to bank branches to ink sign documents). Did something change since then?

You don't "just get" an emoney license. When you apply for the license you sign up to a bunch of regulatory scrutiny most of which seems to be antithetical to this kind of project.[1]

The UK financial regulators are not dumb and have thought this through.

[1] Specifically here are details of the emoney regulations if you're interested https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/electronic-money-payment-instit...

> The UK financial regulators are not dumb and have thought this through.

The UK financial regulators have already given the Electronic Money license to at least three crypto companies[1].

[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/uk-watchdog-grants-third-e-mo...

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