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Four years after shutting down its Novi crypto wallet and offloading the Diem project for $182 million, Meta is making another move into digital asset payments.

Key Takeaways:
Meta has begun paying select creators in USDC stablecoin via Facebook and Instagram.Stripe handles the infrastructure, with transactions running through the Solana and Polygon blockchain networks.Unlike the failed Diem/Libra project, Meta is not issuing its own currency - it is piggybacking on Circle's existing USDC.In Q1 2026, Meta reported $56.31 billion in revenue, a 33% year-over-year increase.
According to a report by Fortune, the company has begun paying select Facebook and Instagram creators in USDC - Circle's stablecoin pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar - with the pilot currently running in Colombia and the Philippines, two markets where traditional banking infrastructure is both slow and expensive for cross-border transactions.
How the Payout System Works
The underlying infrastructure is handled by Stripe, which also manages tax reporting for participants. Transactions are processed through Solana and Polygon, two blockchain networks chosen for their low fees and fast settlement times.
Eligible creators can activate the option through their existing monetization settings and link a compatible third-party wallet such as MetaMask, Phantom, or Binance. Converting USDC into local currency remains entirely the creator's responsibility, as Meta provides no direct off-ramp to fiat money.
The Wreckage Libra Left Behind
The contrast with Meta's previous attempts is significant. When Facebook unveiled Libra in 2019, the ambition was sweeping - a proprietary stablecoin backed by a basket of global currencies that would function as a parallel financial system for the company's billions of users.
Governments and central banks warned that a currency controlled by a private company of that scale posed a direct threat to monetary sovereignty. Payment giants including Visa and Mastercard withdrew from the consortium under regulatory pressure, and the project was rebranded Diem in 2020 in an attempt to distance itself from the backlash. It made little difference. By early 2022, Meta sold the Diem intellectual property to Silvergate Bank and walked away entirely.
What followed was a brief, unconvincing detour into NFTs. Instagram and Facebook launched features allowing creators to display and sell digital collectibles in 2022, only for Meta to quietly drop them less than a year later, redirecting attention toward Reels and in-app messaging payments instead.
Why the Regulatory Ground Has Shifted
The regulatory landscape that doomed Libra has changed considerably since then. The passage of the GENIUS Act in the United States in 2025 established the first clear federal framework for stablecoin issuers, giving companies like Circle defined rules to operate within and, by extension, giving platforms like Meta a legal basis for building payment systems around regulated stablecoins.
Rather than trying to issue its own currency and absorb the full weight of regulatory scrutiny, Meta is now positioning itself as a distribution layer on top of existing infrastructure - using Circle's USDC, Stripe's payment rails, and public blockchain networks it neither owns nor controls.
The cost exposure is a fraction of what Libra required, the regulatory risk sits largely with Circle and Stripe rather than with Meta directly, and the company avoids the years of R&D overhead that went into building - and eventually abandoning - the Diem blockchain.
Record Earnings, Massive Spending, and the Logic Behind the Timing
On April 29, 2026, Meta reported first-quarter earnings that exceeded analyst expectations by a considerable margin. Revenue came in at $56.31 billion, up 33% compared to the same period last year, while diluted earnings per share hit $10.44 against a consensus estimate of $6.67. AI-driven improvements to ad targeting pushed the average price per ad up 12%, while total ad impressions grew 19%. The platform's daily active user base across its family of apps reached 3.56 billion.
At the same time, Meta raised its full-year capital expenditure guidance to between $125 billion and $145 billion, with the bulk earmarked for AI infrastructure. That level of spending creates obvious pressure to find low-overhead ways to scale other parts of the business. Automating creator payouts through stablecoin rails - removing the need for local banking partnerships, reducing currency conversion fees, and compressing settlement times - fits that logic.
What Comes Next
Whether the pilot expands beyond Colombia and the Philippines, and whether creators in larger markets will eventually have access to the same option, Meta has not said.
For now, the company is testing whether the infrastructure holds up in two markets where the practical argument for crypto payouts is strongest, and where the consequences of a stumble are relatively contained.
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