Facebook has a new pen pal: The Senate Banks Committee
On Friday, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Banks Committee sent a politely worded letter to Facebook inquiring about its plans to move aggressively into the payments market by offering its users the opportunity to buy products directly from merchants using a Facebook backed coin or cryptocurrency depending on how nefarious you want to make its plans sound.
Why is this a big deal? Well how much money do you make off credit and debit card transactions issued by your credit union? If Facebook successfully integrates the coin payment platform into its infrastructure this would mean that 1/3 of the world’s population could start using Facebook to facilitate purchases, making Facebook an overnight threat to Visa and MasterCard.
In their letter to Facebook, following an article describing Facebook’s plans in the Wall Street Journal, the Senators explain that in addition to Facebook’s cryptocurrency ambitions, “privacy experts have raised questions about Facebook’s extensive data collection practices and whether any of the data collected by Facebook is being used for purposes that do or should subject Facebook to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.”
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