Mark Carney recognized the potential of Libra to solve some financial problems

Bank of England Chairman Mark Carney stressed that society needs to recognize the problems that Facebook is trying to solve with the help of the Libra project.

"It's way too expensive to do domestic payments. It's way too slow, and that hurts consumers and businesses. It stifles innovation, and it's far too expensive to send money cross-border, and there are huge financial inclusion issues related to that and costs related to that. So, while we are trying to address all these issues, we have to absolutely acknowledge the problem that they're trying to solve. And if it's not this, we'd better have some answers for what else it is," Carney said at a press conference.

At the same time, the Chairman of the Bank of England stressed that in order to be successful, such a big project as Libra should be almost perfect, at least from a security point of view, otherwise it is better not to release it at all.

"It's either successful or it isn't. If it's successful, it becomes systemic, because it would involve a very large number of users. And if you're a systemic payment system, it's 5-sigma. You have to be on all the time. You can't have teething issues. You can't have people losing money out of their wallets … The standards are in a different zip code — to use the American term," 

said Carney.

He noted that Facebook will have to solve many more problems to launch Libra, including the main risks, asset management, and compliance with the requirements of regulators in the area of combating money laundering and terrorist financing.

Earlier, Carney expressed the opinion that at present the global payment systems are not ideal, and for the success of a cryptocurrency, Facebook is obliged to meet the "highest standards" in world regulation. 

SOURCE