
Visa, Mastercard, and other businesses are incorporating their operations more and more with Facebook, but with all the media scrutiny and scandal surrounding the social network, is it an anchor that will pull them down, or a balloon that will lift them up?
Facebook Inc. gained as much as 2.5%, making it one of the few tech names moving higher in early Friday trading, after reports that it’s making progress toward its cryptocurrency ambitions.
A group of payments and other companies, including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Uber, agreed to invest about $10 million each in a consortium to oversee the digital coin Facebook plans to unveil next week, the Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday. The social-media giant has also hired a U.K. bank lobbyist as its director of public policy in London, the Financial Times said.
Separately, the Wall Street Journal also reported Facebook plans to step up its marketing spending in a shift in its consumer-facing advertising strategy.