Skip to main content

Facebook rebrands its cryptocurrency wallet as Novi

Facebook’s digital wallet has a new name: Novi.

Recommended Videos

The social media giant announced on Tuesday that Calibra, which will send and hold Libra, Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency, has been rebranded.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Novi will allow people to send money through a message on either Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. There will also be a stand-alone app for Apple and Android. 

Facebook

Once Novi becomes available, you’ll need a government-issued ID to sign up, according to the announcement.

The Novi team promised there will be no hidden fees to send, receive, or withdraw money, and that all transfers will be instant. Novi’s features also include the ability to make cross-border money transfers instantly and securely. 

“Whether you’re sending money home to support the family members who supported you, or you’re receiving money from your friends no matter where they are, the Novi wallet will make money work better for everyone,” Novi said in the announcement.

Novi will be released once the Libra blockchain network is available. The Facebook-backed cryptocurrency is expected to be released later this year. 

The name change comes as the Libra Association, which is comprised of Facebook and a diverse lineup of businesses and nonprofit organizations, announced several updates to its Libra cryptocurrency project last month. 

The association is shifting from creating an open global financial network to offering both single-currency and multi-currency coins tied to local, real-world currencies. 

Other updates include a network-level system to combat money laundering and replacing the planned permission-less system with a market-driven network that is open and competitive.

Allison Matyus
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Allison Matyus is a general news reporter at Digital Trends. She covers any and all tech news, including issues around social…
Facebook delays the launch of its dating app in Europe over privacy concerns
Facebook Dating

Facebook Dating, which launched last September in the US, has hit a major snag in Europe. 

On Wednesday, the Data Protection Commission (DPC), an independent consumer protection agency, announced it was “very concerned” about Facebook’s desire to expedite the feature across the European Union, leading the social media giant to stall its rollout indefinitely. 

Read more
AMD may have underestimated the RX 9070
Gigabyte's RX 9070 XT GPU.

AMD's upcoming RX 9000 series is still largely a mystery, but the cards are already out there -- and AMD was actually demoing the RX 9070 during CES 2025. We may not know any specs of the card at this point, but thanks to an early benchmark, we know that it does a surprisingly good job in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Can it really compete against some of Nvidia's best graphics cards?

The RX 9070 was available for brief testing at the AMD booth, paired with the mighty impressive Ryzen 9 9950X3D. IGN spotted it and gave it a test run in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which has a built-in benchmarking tool. Mind you, this is the non-XT model, meaning that it's not the flagship card -- but it's unclear just how much worse it'll be than the XT variant.

Read more
Preorders for AMD’s RX 9000 series may open this month
Various AMD RX 9000 series graphics cards.

Some much-needed good news just popped up in relation to AMD's best graphics cards, the RX 9070 XT and RX 9070. As spotted by momomo_us on X (formerly Twitter), the cards have been listed on the B&H website, and although you can't buy them right now, there's a preorder date for later this month. With the RTX 50-series set to launch on January 30, can AMD still beat Nvidia to the punch?

During AMD's CES 2025 keynote, the RDNA 4 lineup was largely a no-show, with nothing but a promise that we'd find out more soon. We weren't given the specs, much less a firm release date. While we still don't know when the RX 9000 series will truly arrive, at least we now know when the preorders are likely to start.  Keep in mind that none of this is official information from AMD, so everything could still change.

Read more