X users are on the brink of a new era, where the platform will offer not just money transfers between users but also the ability to make purchases from stores and earn interest on their account balances, akin to traditional bank functionalities. This revelation comes directly from X’s head of payments, who envisions a comprehensive financial ecosystem within the platform.
In a recent post dated April 22, Christopher Stanley, X’s chief information security officer for payments, revealed that X’s payment capabilities will transcend mere tipping. The upcoming features include an in-app wallet capable of securely storing and facilitating money transfers to any other X user.
Stanley elaborated, likening the initial experience to Venmo, with future developments allowing users to accrue interest, make purchases, and potentially use the platform for in-store transactions akin to services like Apple Pay.
Stanley added that the “end goal” of payments on X was to create a fully functioning financial ecosystem where users never have to withdraw funds to conduct any typical transactions.
“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’s comments come just three days after X secured a money transmitter license in the state of Tenessee on April 19. With the latest license secured, X has now received money-transmitting licenses in a total of 25 states in the United States, according to the Nationwide Multi-State Licensing System (NMLS).
On Dec. 21 last year, X’s executive chairman Elon Musk told ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood that he plans to launch in-app payment services on X midway through 2024.
At the time he said he’d hoped to launch financial services on the app sooner but had been “weighed down” by bureaucratic processes.
Several commentators have shared that X’s upcoming payments feature will initially only offer support for fiat currencies, however, Musk has reportedly instructed developers at X to build the platform’s payments system in such a way that crypto functionality can be added in the future.
Despite Musk showing a high level of enthusiasm for cryptocurrency in the past, with Tesla still holding 9,720 Bitcoin
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on its books and Dogecoin
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being an accepted currency in the electric car company’s merchandise store, Musk has splashed cold water on any hopes of crypto integration on X.
In December, he told Wood that he spends “hardly any time” thinking about cryptocurrency. Since then he has not made any statements confirming that crypto would be used for X payments.
