(Bloomberg) -- Booking Holdings Inc., an online travel company that operates Kayak.com and Priceline.com among other websites, said it’s withdrawing from participation in the Libra Association, an ambitious and controversial Facebook Inc.-led project to create a new cryptocurrency.

The Norwalk, Connecticut-based company joins PayPal Holdings Inc., Stripe Inc., Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., MercadoLibre Inc. and EBay Inc. in leaving the project in the past two weeks. The plan has came under intense scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators who feared that Libra could be used for criminal purposes and undercut countries’ monetary policy, among myriad other concerns.

Booking was among more than two dozen companies that expressed initial interest in joining the project. The Libra Association planned to meet Monday at its headquarters in Geneva to finalize the association’s membership. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg plans to testify next week at the House Financial Services Committee on Libra, among other topics.

Representatives for the Libra Association didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Light in Washington at jlight8@bloomberg.net;Olivia Carville in New York at ocarville1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

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