Elon Musk Aims to Transform "X" (Formerly Twitter) into a Financial Center
Elon Musk plans to turn his social network, "X" (formerly Twitter), into a hub for financial services. He hopes to add financial services to the platform by 2024, aiming to replace traditional banks.
This was reported by The Verge.
Elon Musk expects these new features to be launched by the end of 2024, and during a recent conference call with company employees, he expressed that people will be surprised by "how powerful" it will be.
"When I say payments, I mean your entire financial life," Musk stated during the call. "If it involves money, it will be on our platform. Money, securities, or anything else. So, it's not just sending $20 to a friend. I'm talking about something where you don't need a bank account."
Currently, the company is focused on obtaining licenses for money transfers within the United States as part of its financial services expansion.
"I would be shocked if we don't have this deployed by the end of next year," Musk said.
X's CEO, Linda Yaccarino, confirmed that the company sees the possibility of achieving this goal in 2024.
Musk has previously voiced his plans to transform X into a financial centre. He even renamed Twitter to X, in homage to his dot-com-era online bank, X.com, which later became a part of PayPal. Previously, he mentioned that the platform would offer high-yield money market accounts, debit cards, checks, and loan services to enable users to "send money anywhere in the world instantly and in real-time."
"The product roadmap for X/PayPal was written by me and David Sacks in virtually July 2000," Musk stated during an internal conversation with X employees. "But for some reason, when PayPal became eBay, not only did it not roll out the rest of the list, it actually cancelled a bunch of key functions, which is crazy. So, PayPal is actually a less full product than what we came up with 23 years ago."
As reported by The Gaze, after taking the helm of Twitter in October, Musk stated his vision of creating an all-encompassing program, similar to the popular Chinese app WeChat, which could offer users various services, including direct payments, access to shopping, transportation, and more.
However, Musk faces significant challenges in achieving this goal. Convincing people of the need for such a platform is one thing, but gaining their trust with their entire financial lives is a much greater challenge.