UK’s Checkout.com Joins Libra Association

British startup Checkout.com is the first payments firm to join Facebook’s Libra Association after Visa, Mastercard and Stripe exited the program in October.

“In the past few years, we have witnessed from afar the birth of various digitally native currencies,” Checkout.com CEO and Co-founder Guillaume Pousaz said in a statement on Tuesday (April 28). “We are technologists at heart and have always been fascinated by blockchain and the potential benefits it could bring to global transaction processing.”

Pousaz said he believes blockchain regulation is necessary to avoid corruption, especially when it comes to payments, as well as to “drive mass adoption” and provide a secure and stable infrastructure.

He also believes the Libra project can offer financial inclusion for “billions of unbanked people,” bringing them into the digital economy.

Checkout.com is a competitor to the likes of Stripe and Dutch firm Adyen, which have made it easier for firms to integrate online payments. Last year, the company was valued at $2 billion in its first funding round, a $230 million deal that was agreed upon over handshakes rather than traditional term sheets.

Although many firms pulled out of the Libra project over the past few months, including PayPal, eBay and Vodafone, new firms have recently joined, like the eCommerce giant Shopify and the cryptocurrency brokerage Tagomi.

“[Checkout.com] joins a dynamic and growing group of Libra Association members committed to achieving a safe, transparent and consumer-friendly implementation of a global payment system that breaks down financial barriers for billions of people,” Dante Disparte, head of policy and communications at the Libra Association, said in a statement to CNBC.

The Libra Association recently overhauled the project and said it would launch several stablecoins, each linked to a country’s currency. It cited stablecoins based on the euro, the sterling and the dollar as potential cases. Also, the Association said it would provide a redesigned “Libra Coin.”