Elon Musk’s payments on X is about to launch. It’s in beta at present | Credits: Evolf/Shutterstock
Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that his X platform would soon roll out a payments service in beta mode.
Responding to the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley account’s comment that X would launch “X Money soon,” Musk wrote: “This will be a very limited access beta at first.” Musk added on X that, “When people’s savings [sic] are involved, extreme care must be taken.” His confirmation follows X Money’s planned launch this year, according to the platform’s X account.
X has been actively working to obtain multiple transmitter licenses for X Money across the United States, having secured 41 such licenses at time of publication, according a Nationwide Multi-State Licensing System report. Some of the early public indications of Musk’s plans to integrate payments into X date to October 2022, when Musk said his $44-billion Twitter acquisition would become “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”
‘Unlimited interactivity’
In 2023, Twitter rebranded to X, with CEO Linda Yaccarino disclosing that the social media app planned to feature “unlimited interactivity,” support multiple media formats, and feature payments and banking.
At the time, many speculated that the platform would likely support cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The payment platform was initially expected to be launched in mid-2024.
The platform apparently gathered further momentum with US President Donald Trump taking office in January and appointing Musk as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency’s Workforce Optimisation Initiative (DOGE).
A bit of pushback
Heavily involved in administration through DOGE, Musk quickly received pushback from US officials like US Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who criticised X’s payment platform plans in February.
“Musk has lost money hand over fist on X. So he has this idea of X becoming a big money platform where he would get everyone’s personal financial data,” Warren said, referring to Musk’s efforts to dismantle her agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
X Money would essentially function as a digital wallet, with Visa enabling users to fund those wallets from their bank accounts and then use them as they would other peer-to-peer services like Venmo, Revolut or other similar Fintech apps.
Since SpaceX boss Musk bought Twitter in 2022, there has been speculation that the website would be used as a crypto payment platform due to the billionaire’s frequent praise of the meme coin Dogecoin. But there was no mention of Dogecoin—or crypto—in January’s announcement or Musk’s latest comment.
