META’S CRYPTO WALLET ‘NOVI’ TO BE INEFFECTIVE STARTING 1 SEPTEMBER

Meta’s money-transfer service, which utilises the business’s own cryptocurrency digital wallet “Novi pilot” will be discontinued starting 1 September. Users have time till 1 September to remove their information and any leftover cryptocurrency balance from the website.

Users will no longer to be able to add money to Novi from 21 July and lose access to their accounts on 1 September. Reports suggest that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had also hinted at creating a digital wallet that could help users manage and store “digital clothing, art, videos, music, experiences, virtual events, and more” last month. The wallet would be interoperable across different Metaverse experiences, reflecting the goals of the Metaverse Standards Forum that Meta and a group of other companies helped form, which calls for industry-wide standards across virtual reality and augmented reality experiences.

If a user forgets to withdraw their remaining balance from Novi, Meta will “attempt to transfer” their funds to the bank account or debit card added to the service, said the company.

The announcement of the Novi app and Novi on WhatsApp being non-operationalised was shared on the official website of Meta. Meta launched Novi in 2021 as a platform, which was supposed to be a safe way for people to send and receive cryptocurrency. A collaboration with Diem was also on cards but it couldn’t happen since Diem collapsed in February this year. It appears as though one of the greatest IT corporations in the world has also been impacted by the cryptocurrency meltdown.