Washington (AFP)

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has been summoned by a US parliamentary committee to review its digital currency project, Libra, which has been attacked from all sides.

"Mark Zuckerberg will testify before the commission at a hearing on 23 October (...) titled + review of Facebook and its impact on the financial services and housing + sectors," said Wednesday the commission in charge of financial services of the House of Representatives.

The young billionaire will be the only person heard during this hearing.

The Libra is expected to offer from the current 2020 a new payment method outside traditional banking channels, to buy goods or send money as easily as an instant message.

But the project is provoking growing hostility from many regulators and governments, in the United States as well as in Europe. They are worried about Facebook's bad reputation for privacy and the protection of personal data and fear that the Libra will be used to deceive the tax authorities.

Earlier this year, David Marcus, head of Facebook for the future digital currency, defended the social network plan for more than two hours during a hearing before a US Senate Banking Committee, saying it would not be launched. without the approval of the regulators.

Facebook says the Libra could help lower the cost of remittances around the world and help those who are excluded from the current banking system.

Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, warned that the Libra represented a threat to the "monetary sovereignty of states", describing as "systemic" the risks that could result from this "possible privatization of a currency (.. .) owned by a single actor that has more than 2 billion users on the planet ".

"Under these conditions, we can not authorize the development of Libra on European soil," he told the OECD in September.

Last week, the California Payments Company PayPal has left the association made up of companies and organizations supposed to ensure the governance of the future currency.

© 2019 AFP