Meta, the U.S. tech large helmed by Fb creator Mark Zuckerberg, is aiming to enter the stablecoin area later this 12 months, pending profitable integration with a third-party agency to facilitate funds utilizing the dollar-pegged token know-how, in accordance with three folks accustomed to the plans.
The tech large, which owns Fb, WhatsApp and Instagram and has greater than 3 billion customers, needs to start its stablecoin integration early in the second half of this 12 months, mentioned considered one of the folks, who spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of the plans aren’t public. Meta is planning to combine a vendor to assist administer stablecoin-backed funds and implement a brand new pockets, the individual mentioned.
A second individual mentioned that Meta has despatched out a request for product (RFP) to third-party corporations and talked about Stripe as a probable candidate for piloting Meta’s stablecoin.
Stripe, which acquired stablecoin specialist Bridge final 12 months, is a long-time companion of Meta, and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison joined Meta’s board of administrators in April 2025.
Meta, Stripe, and Bridge have been approached for remark, however none responded by the time of publication.
Meta introducing stablecoins would let it open fee rails to its large consumer base whereas bypassing costly conventional banking charges, and doubtlessly place it as a worldwide chief in “social commerce” and cross-border remittances.
The transfer would additionally put the tech large in direct competitors with the likes of Elon Musk’s social media platform X in addition to messaging platform Telegram, each of that are aiming to deliver funds in-house by changing into “tremendous app.” This was considered one of the authentic objectives for the deliberate Libra undertaking — permitting the social media firm to faucet its huge networks, together with WhatsApp’s peer-to-peer messaging service and Fb and Instagram’s community and commerce instruments, for funds.
Regulatory shift
Meta famously tried to introduce the Libra stablecoin, later renamed Diem, in 2019, solely to face robust headwinds resulting from a much less favorable regulatory local weather than immediately’s and a lingering reputational hit from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
In the face of a pushback in opposition to the undertaking by U.S. lawmakers, the Libra Affiliation, because it was then known as, scaled again its ambitions in 2020, pivoting to the improvement of numerous stablecoins pegged to completely different currencies, versus the authentic plan of a worldwide digital foreign money backed by a basket of nationwide currencies.
In the finish, Meta’s stablecoin by no means formally launched, and the undertaking was shut down and its property bought off in early 2022.
The regulatory local weather in the U.S. immediately is fairly completely different. There are a number of crypto regulatory regimes underway, together with President Donald Trump’s GENIUS Act, which, for the first time, established a authorized basis for U.S. stablecoin issuers and opened the floodgates for market entrants with new tokens. Nevertheless, U.S. regulators are nonetheless solely in the early phases of drafting the laws governing issuers.
That mentioned, the entire Libra/Diem expertise has led Meta to choose counting on a third-party stablecoin funds supplier this time round, in accordance with considered one of the sources.
“They wish to do that, however at arm’s size,” mentioned the supply.
