NEW YORK: Facebook plans to create a new digital currency similar to Bitcoin for global use. Its new digital currency can be used on its services and boost ads on its platforms. Libra, the digital currency, is scheduled to launch sometime in the next six to 12 months.

Facebook is taking more than two dozen partners including PayPal, Uber, Spotify, Visa and Mastercard — will help fund, build and govern the system.

Facebook hopes to raise as much as $1 billion from existing and future partners to support the effort. David Marcus, who is heading Facebook’s cryptocurrency operation, tweeted on Tuesday that Libra is in part aimed at “the 1.7 billion people who are still unbanked 30 years after the invention of the web.”