By CCN: Facebook’s cryptocurrency ambitions could translate into reality as soon as next year. The BBC reports that the social media behemoth is on track to start testing its bitcoin rival – known internally as GlobalCoin – by the end of the year before its digital payments system comes online across 12 countries in the first quarter of 2020.

Facebook is attempting to disrupt bitcoin

It emerged last month that Facebook was looking for $1 billion in funding for Project Libra, its secretive cryptocurrency project.

Libra took off a year ago when Facebook was looking to devise a way to transfer money between users of its WhatsApp service. But the social media giant’s ambitions have grown far bigger. It is now looking to create a digital payments system that will ensure cheap, fast, and secure money transfer between users.

In simple words, Facebook is trying to copy what bitcoin already does – reduce transaction costs and remove barriers in the financial system to cut transaction times.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg probably believes that he can disrupt bitcoin in particular and the cryptocurrency industry in general thanks to a massive user base, driven by properties such as WhatsApp and Instagram.

The Facebook CEO had said earlier this year that he is planning to integrate Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram to enable cross-platform messaging. In hindsight, it looks like Facebook was already preparing for the launch of the so-called GlobalCoin, as the cross-platform messaging feature would allow users across all three services to send digital currency to each other.

Read the full story on CCN.com.