Business Insider reports that Facebook has been talking to an open-source payment-tech company, Stellar, about ways in which FB might use blockchain technology.
The gist of the talks is that FB, which has a blockchain apps team led by David Marcus, wants to push into finance and go head to head with the payment networks of the big banks.
One of the most commonly cited benefits of blockchain over traditional payment processing is … speed. A recent JP Morgan Research Note contrasted a transaction on Ripple, that took took four seconds, with one of a traditional banking system, which took three to five days.
An anonymous Stellar insider apparently told BI that if Facebook does team up with Stellar, “They’d be taking the rug out from under the banks.”
CCN.com goes another step, suggesting that Facebook is planning to fork the public Stellar chain rather than relying on the public Stellar chain, and that it may create its own digital token.