[wickoff]

Banks transfers take longer, banks transfers cost money and international banks transfers outside of SEPA network are a nightmare and they can get blocked/stalled for odd reasons.

Blockhain is a technical convenience - the Libra Association consists of 28 members. Everybody is more comfortable with money being stored on the public ledger rather than on a database server owned by Facebook. Blockchain is useful in cases where a collaborative/adversarial relationship exists between multiple parties. In this case this is regulators, governments, Libra association members and users. Blockchain keeps everybody honest, compliant and ensures data integrity.

It also removes some of legal responsibility from Facebook because they don't actually process the transactions themselves, it's peer 2 peer.