Britain's Vodafone Group PLC has left the entity that manages the Facebook Inc led effort to launch Libra, a global digital currency, Libra Association said on Tuesday.

Major central banks are looking at the case for issuing their own digital currencies, the Bank of England and European Central Bank said on Tuesday, amid a growing debate over the future of money and who controls it.

The Bank of Japan said on Tuesday it and other central banks including the European Central Bank and Bank of England had formed a group to assess potential cases for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in their home jurisdictions.

The cryptocurrency arm of Fidelity Investments, one of the world's largest investment managers, has launched its first foray into Europe, opening a new front in efforts to drag digital money into mainstream investing.

Visa Inc said on Monday it agreed to buy privately held software startup Plaid Inc in a $5.3 billion deal that will boost the payments giant's access to the booming financial technology space.

Facebook's Libra project has failed in its current form and needs reworking to be approved, said the president of Switzerland where the cryptocurrency is seeking regulatory consent.

Facebook's Libra project has no solid plan yet for how or where it will be launched next year, a member of the board that will oversee the cryptocurrency told Reuters on Thursday.

If you're not a bitcoin enthusiast, you probably haven't heard what's happening next year: It's called the "halving", and it will cut production of the cryptocurrency by 50%.

U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard launched a broadside against Facebook's Libra digital currency project on Wednesday, saying it faces a "core set of legal and regulatory challenges" including clarity about how it would be tied to some basket of underlying assets.

Banking apps backed by SoftBank Group Corp, China's Tencent Holdings Ltd and others are proliferating in Brazil, offering such a dizzying array of choices that skeptics say a shakeout looks increasingly inevitable.