San Francisco, May 4 (IANS): Facebook is working hard to launch its own bitcoin for cryptocurrency-based payments on its platform that has 2.38 billion users.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, the social media giant is "recruiting dozens of financial firms and online merchants" towards this goal.

The cryptocurrency-based system would use a digital coin similar to bitcoin.

Facebook, on its part, has said it is exploring ways to leverage the power of Blockchain technology.

In a February interview with Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was "potentially interested" in putting the Facebook login on the Blockchain technology.

"I'm thinking about going back to decentralised or Blockchain authentication. Although I haven't figured out a way to make this work out but this is around authentication and basically granting access to your information and to different services," Zuckerberg told Zittrain.

According to him, Blockchain could give users more powers when granting data access to third-party apps.

Facebook last year promoted one of its senior engineers Evan Cheng as the Director of Engineering at its recently launched Blockchain division.

It has set up a group within the company to explore Blockchain technology and its potential use for the platform, headed by Messenger chief David Marcus.