Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has announced the termination of its Novi wallet trial program. The company’s trial for digital wallet payments, known as Novi, will end on September 1.
The completion of the pilot project will also signal the end of the libra stablecoin experiment, which began three years after Facebook’s crypto payments network was introduced.
Ten months were spent testing the cryptocurrency-powered payment mechanism with participants from the United States and Guatemala.
This announcement was added to the website’s home page so that visitors would be aware of the situation. The website announced that as of July 21 users will not be able to deposit funds into their accounts.
The users have been requested by the corporation to remove their funds from the site, and they have been instructed to do so “as quickly as possible.” Additionally, they were told to retrieve and save any pertinent data because Novi’s WhatsApp account and Novi app will also be shut down.
Once the experiment is over, users will also no longer have access to their transaction history and other data.
As of June 2019, Novi, formerly known as Calibra, served as Meta’s wallet for the libra stablecoin (later renamed Diem). As the stablecoin project changed course due to regulatory concerns, its purpose changed.
The Novi project envisioned starting a test for crypto-based remittances in 2020, however, the wallet’s functions were never extended outside of the United States and Guatemala.
The Novi pilot was shut down just five months after Silvergate Capital Corporation purchased Meta’s stablecoin project, Diem.
Diem was intended to be launched as the native currency of the Novi wallet and serve as the stablecoin that powered the Meta ecosystem.
The Novi pilot came to an end after Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Meta announced on his open Facebook profile on June 22 that Facebook Pay would be replaced by Meta Pay.