Facebook Product Managers Launch A New Way To Pay

Facebook is making a bet on serving customers who are unbanked
Facebook is making a bet on serving customers who are unbanked
Image Credit: Antana

The product managers at Facebook have real problem on their hands. The company is so large and so successful, that in order to make it larger and more successful they have to come up with really big ideas. This means that they have to sit around and review their product development definition as they try to identify new products that can appeal to their over 2 billion users. The Facebook product managers think that they’ve come up with something that is going to work: a new cryptocurrency called Libra.


The Idea Behind Libra

The first thing that you have to understand about the plan that Facebook’s product managers have put together is that they have a very specific target audience for their new cryptocurrency. They would like to use this new way of making payments to bring financial services to the hundreds of millions of people who don’t currently use banks or other traditional financial institutions. The tricky part about this plan is that this is exactly what all of the other cryptocurrencies have been trying to do for the past few years and none of them have been successful. Cryptocurrencies have not taken off for conducting daily transactions.

Let’s face it: the Facebook product managers may be on to something here. The unbanked folks out there represent a very large potential customer base for a cryptocurrency. Right now, 1.7 billion adults do not have an account at a financial institution. If the Facebook product managers can get even a portion of these people to start to use Libra, then they’ll have something to put on their product manager resume. However, in order to get people to start to get used Facebook’s new Libra cryptocurrency it is going to take more than creating clever software. What the Facebook product managers are going to have to do is to create an infrastructure that will allow customers to easily use their Libra cryptocurrency. This means that Facebook is going to have to both work with local governments and tailor their services to meet the needs of local cultures.

There are some real challenges here. Currently there are only a few businesses out there that know how to accept cryptocurrencies. From a customer point-of-view, learning how to go about acquiring, storing, and using a cryptocurrency is still fairly convoluted. Additionally, all of this is almost impossible for anyone who does not have internet access.


How Facebook Hopes To Make Libra A Success

The Libra cryptocurrency is not like other cryptocurrencies. It’s going to have Facebook behind it. Facebook is currently the largest social network with over 2 billion users. What this means is that the Libra cryptocurrency should have no problems being placed in front of this large collection of potential customers. Right now, nobody knows how many Facebooks users belong to the ranks of the unbanked. However, it is believed that the opportunity could be significant. The Facebook product managers believe that the fees associated with traditional banking products are the biggest barriers for the unbanked.

A key issue that the Facebook product managers need to be aware of is that the unbanked are not all the same. There are a lot of different people with different motivations that make up this group. In the past, this has been a problem for a number of the other cryptocurrencies that wanted to operate worldwide while remaining based in Silicon Valley. A good example of the types of challenges that the Facebook product managers are going to up against is Mexico. In Mexico, many of the unbanked are paid in cash and conduct all of their transactions in cash. One reason that they do this is to avoid paying taxes. If by using a cryptocurrency they all of a sudden have to start paying taxes, they won’t do it.

There will probably be other roadblocks that the Facebook product managers will encounter as they attempt to roll out a new way of paying for things. Specifically, governments may turn out to be an obstacle that they will have to overcome. Currently the Facebook product managers have said that they will only be trying to get their new cryptocurrency adopted where it will be possible. This means that their initial focus is going to be on countries that allow the use of cryptocurrencies. However, this may end up excluding some of the largest markets where Facebook users reside.


What All Of This Means For You

The product managers at Facebook always have to be dreaming big if they want to make an impact. They’ve reviewed their product manager job description and believe that they may have come up with an idea that could change the world. They have decided that they now want to move ahead and introduce a new cryptocurrency for making payments. This new cryptocurrency will be called Libra. They have a number of very large challenges ahead of them.

The product managers at Facebook have a plan for their new Libra cryptocurrency. They want to target the large portion of their users who are currently unbanked – don’t use traditional financial intuitions. There is a huge group of people who don’t use banks: estimated at 1.7 billion adults. However, the Facebook product managers are going to have to build a new infrastructure to support their new cryptocurrency. Using cryptocurrencies can be difficult for both business and customers. The Facebook product managers have the advantage of being able to use Facebook to put their new currency before a very large audience. They need to understand that the unbanked are not all the same and each of them will have different set of issues that need to be solved. The Facebook product managers may also have to deal with governments that don’t currently allow cryptocurrencies.

Facebook is a very large firm. They have an incredible user base that consists of billions of users. If they decide to do something, there is a very good chance that it will succeed. However, the Facebook product managers have signed up for a real challenge here. Launching a new cryptocurrency is not an easy thing to do. They are going to have to do a lot of work to prepare the way for their new currency and make it easy for people to use it. If they can accomplish this, then in the future we may be asking how much Libra something costs…


– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills™


Question For You: Do you think that the Facebook product manager should partner with any other cryptocurrencies?


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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As product managers, one of the most important things that we do is to use our product development definition to create products that our customers are going to want. There are lot of different ways that we can go about doing this. We can place them in attractive packages, we can get celebrities to endorse them, and in the case of food products, we can make them taste good. This is why it is so strange that some product managers are currently working very hard to get people to try a new type of wellness shot that generally tastes very bad. How is this going to look on anyone’s product manager resume?