X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, announced it would begin rolling out a peer-to-peer payment service similar to Venmo or PayPal this year—a feature the social media site’s billionaire owner Elon Musk has long pushed as part of his plan to develop an “everything app.”
The social media company said the service will be part of its push to become an “everything app.”
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Key Facts
X officially announced the new feature in a blog post, touting the new service designed to enhance “user utility and new opportunities for commerce.”
The company did not give a timeframe on when the new service would be available, but Musk previously told Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood it could launch as early as “mid-2024.”
According to the company, the new payment service will “showcas[e] the power of living more of your life in one place,” as owner Elon Musk continues to promote X as a future “everything app” capable of handling social media, video and other original content on the same site.
X Payments has registered to do business in at least 32 states, according to public records, and has acquired a money transmitter license needed to process payments in 10, TechCrunch reported in December.
Key Background
In the 1990s, Musk co-founded X.com, an online bank that was later rebranded as PayPal after he was fired by the company’s board. Musk has not worked directly in online payments since his early days at the PayPal precursor, but has frequently discussed getting back into the space with X, the social media site he purchased in October 2022 for $44 million. Twitter had already filed to set up Twitter Payments LLC in 2022, months before Musk purchased the company. “In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Musk posted shortly after officially rebranding the company as X. In the past, Musk has praised WeChat, the Chinese app developed by tech giant Tencent that combines an instant messenger service with peer-to-peer payments, as a model for success with X. “You basically live on WeChat in China. If we can recreate that with Twitter, we’ll be a great success,” Musk reportedly told employees at an all-hands meeting in June 2023.
Tangent
In the post, X said the company was gaining “unstoppable momentum” with record numbers of users using new services rolled out in the last year under Musk’s leadership. This included 100 million daily viewers for X’s Immersive Video feature. Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino have previously said the company reached a new high of 500 million users, with over 2 million new user signups per day. However, data from online tracker Similarweb indicates X only had about 94 million total site visits last December, with about 45.9 million unique users. Threads, the short form blogging competitor launched by Meta in July, had about 76.6 million users from about 29.5 million users for comparison.