Elon Musk, who owns X (previously Twitter), said on Thursday that the platform will include financial services management functions and will be accessible by the end of 2024. According to The Verge, Mr. Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino conducted an all-hands meeting during which he stated that the company needs specific licenses for that and that the criteria will be met within the next few months. This is yet another attempt by Mr. Musk to make X an “everything app,” similar to the popular Chinese service WeChat.
“When I say payments, I mean someone’s entire financial life,” Elon Musk said at the meeting, as per The Verge report.
“If it involves money. It’ll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it’s not just like sending $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account,” he further said.
Ms. Yaccarino stated that the corporation sees this as a “full opportunity” in 2024. Mr. Musk continued, “It would blow my mind if we don’t have that rolled out by the end of next year.”
Elon Musk’s vision for X as a financial hub
Currently, the organization is attempting to obtain money licenses across the United States to begin providing financial services.
Elon Musk also discussed PayPal, which he co-founded in 1998 and was purchased by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. “The X/PayPal product roadmap was written by myself and David Sacks, actually in July of 2000,” he was quoted as saying at Thursday’s meeting by The Verge.
“And for some reason PayPal, once it became eBay, not only did they not implement the rest of the list, but they rolled back a bunch of key features, which is crazy. So PayPal is a less complete product than what we came up with in July of 2000, so 23 years ago,” he further said.
The billionaire had already mentioned turning X into a financial hub. While meeting Twitter staff for the first time in November 2022, he stated that “there’s this transformative opportunity in payments.” He then highlighted his desire for “people on Twitter to be able to send money anywhere in the world instantly and in real-time”.