NEW YORK (AP) — X is teaming up with Visa to soon offer a system for real-time payments on the social media platform — signaling some progress in a yearslong vision from billionaire owner Elon Musk to create an “every thing app.”
Visa is the primary partner for the platform’s “X Money Account” service, which is about to launch later this 12 months, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a Tuesday post announcing the news. The offering, Yaccarino noted, will support an in-platform digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments connected to users’ debit cards, with an choice to transfer funds to a checking account.
In line with Visa, which also posted concerning the partnership on X Tuesday, these services shall be powered by Visa Direct — the payment giant’s easy money transferring service — and shall be available to X Money Account users within the U.S.
Whether X Money will grow to be available to consumers in other countries, and maybe through additional payment partners within the near future remains to be known. And a precise date for the U.S. launch has also not been announced yet.
In her post Tuesday, Yaccarino called the partnership with Visa a “milestone for the The whole lot App” and the “first of many big announcements about X Money this 12 months.”
The prospect of San Francisco-based X, formerly generally known as Twitter, becoming an “every thing app” has been floated around for a while. Before officially closing the deal to purchase the platform for $44 billion back in 2022, Musk expressed interest in creating his own version of something just like China’s WeChat — a “super app” that does video chats, messaging, streaming and payments.
And his fascination with such a platform began long before the Twitter deal was on the table. Musk has been toying with the thought of an “every thing app” because the late Nineties when he launched a startup called X.com that was later merged into what became X.com. He continued to push for PayPal to diversify but was rebuffed by company CEO Peter Thiel and other executives. PayPal was sold in 2002 to eBay for $1.5 billion — providing Musk with a windfall that he funneled into the creation of SpaceX and an investment in Tesla in its early days.
The landscape is much more competitive today — with a handful of firms making similar efforts to expand their in-platform offerings. Other social media giants, corresponding to Facebook parent Meta, have added shopping, games and even dating features.
Consumers now have different platforms at their disposal for communications, payment services, entertainment and more. How X’s coming “every thing” features will fare has yet to be seen. Since Musk’s 2022 takeover, the platform has already alienated many users and advertisers over reports of rising hate speech and misinformation.