Since Elon Musk announced X’s intention to become a payments platform, the company has made significant strides. The social media platform secured licenses to transmit money in 25 states and has licenses pending approval in several others.
Initial expectations for the platform are that X users will be able to tip each other and send peer-to-peer (P2P) payments in-app. But a recent X post by Chief Information Security Officer Christopher Stanley makes it clear that X’s aspirations for the platform go far beyond P2P payments.
“I can pull money into X and store it in my X Wallet and send money to any X Payments user,” Stanley wrote. “Think Venmo at first. Then, as things evolve, you can gain interest, buy products, eventually use it to buy things in stores (think Apple Pay).”
One-Stop Shop
Musk has been very transparent about his ambitions to expand the app into a one-stop shop, a la Alipay. What hasn’t been clear is just how quickly he can transform the social media platform into a full-fledged financial institution.
In December, Musk announced X would support payments, and since then, the company has taken critical steps toward reaching its planned mid-2024 launch. Tennessee recently granted the company a money transmitter license, with several more states still pending license approvals.
Making Banking Obsolete
Cryptocurrency owners anticipated the platform’s launch because of Musk’s well-documented fondness for crypto. But at this point there’s no word on when crypto transactions will be supported by X Payments.
While X will likely leave the door open to future crypto expansion, the company is more focused on making bank accounts obsolete for X users. It’s still unclear how willing users will be to share their financial data with the often controversial company. Regardless, Musk wants X Payments to encompass “someone’s entire financial life,” a sentiment Stanley echoed.
“The end goal is if you ever have any incentive to take money out of our system, then we have failed, you shouldn’t ever need to take money out because you should be able to do anything you need on our platform,” Stanley wrote.
