The social media platform says it’s partnering with Visa, one of the largest credit card processors in the US, to create X Money, a peer-to-peer payment platform. Now, as Musk inadvertently sent the price of a tiny bitcoin rival soaring by 2,000%, X chief executive Linda Yaccarino has quietly confirmed payments will be coming to the social media platform in 2025. Earlier this week, X chief executive Linda Yaccarino confirmed payments will be coming to the social media platform in 2025 in the form of X Money along with a raft of other features, telling people to “buckle up.” However, some critics warn that Musk’s ambitious goals may face regulatory challenges, especially given the increasing scrutiny surrounding digital payments and blockchain-based solutions. X Money is set to leverage blockchain technology to offer enhanced security and speed for its transactions.
While Musk has refrained from commenting on bitcoin or crypto directly in recent years, his support of Trump in the run up to the November U.S. presidential election helped drive the bitcoin price higher as traders bet on Trump leading a pro-bitcoin and crypto administration. Now, as China scrambles to contain a crisis that some think could blow up the bitcoin price, a leak has revealed Elon Musk’s X could be about to “imminently” launch a bitcoin and crypto game-changer. The dogecoin price has crashed back since it hit an all-time high in 2021 but has held on to some of its huge gains, confounding it’s critics, and is still a top ten cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $11.5 billion. Meanwhile, Musk has confirmed he still owns a lot of “joke” bitcoin rival dogecoin, a meme-based cryptocurrency Musk once said he wanted to make “the currency of Earth.”
App researchers have also found traces of code related to X Money multiple times now describing the functionality of being able to load the money into a wallet on the platform and pay other users. Earlier this year, Nima Owji, an app researcher, said that X Money wouldn’t be available in all the U.S. states at launch. In November 2022, Musk suggested to the platform’s advertisers in a meeting publicly broadcast on Spaces that its coming payments product might ultimately offer certain banking features, such as a high-yield money market account.
Yaccarino said you’ll be able to connect your debit cards for peer-to-peer payments, instantly transfer money to your bank account and access your X Wallet via Visa Direct. Visa reposted the announcement, confirming that X Money users will be able to fund and transfer money using their debit card with Visa Direct. The company will use Visa Direct, which is Visa’s solution for real-time money transfers, to load money into X Money’s wallet, connect to a debit card for paying other users, and transfer money back to your bank account. X, the Elon Musk-owned social media platform formerly called Twitter, has obtained payments licenses from several U.S. states in recent months – including a currency transmitter license in Rhode Island earlier this week.
“Spinning out Fortitude Mining provides greater growth opportunities to further scale the business, including raising capital, making additional investments, and attracting top-tier talent,” said Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of DCG, in a statement. The announcement of X Money has sparked a flurry of reactions online, with users divided over Musk’s latest project. Crypto transactions could be separate from X Money and Visa transactions, but there’s still a chance, depending on X’s plans. Musk has been a proponent of Dogecoin, but there’s been no mention of crypto being available on X Money at this time. One of the first use cases for X Money is to allow creators on the site to accept payments and store funds without external institutions, said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Some peer-to-peer apps also charge other fees, such as instant transfer and withdrawal fees. The platform has lost millions of users since the tech billionaire bought the social media platform, and more recently, since Musk aligned with President Donald Trump. Former Twitter users have turned to other social media platforms like Meta’s Threads and Bluesky, which has gained 27 million users since the November election.
Now, after Elon Musk revealed his personal crypto holdings, his social media platform X has quietly received another money-transmitter license, adding to a clutch of state approvals as it looks to “revolutionize” payments in 2024. PayPal, which Musk was among an influential group of founders, has leaned into bitcoin and crypto over the last few years, launching its own dollar-pegged stablecoin cryptocurrency after rolling out support for bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin cash in late 2020. PayPal’s support for bitcoin and crypto helped kick off the 2021 bitcoin price bull run. She said users will be able to connect debit cards to allow peer-to-peer payments and the option to instantly transfer funds to their bank account.
This logo, replacing the famous blue bird of Twitter, symbolizes a new era of possibilities and limitless potential. With “$X,” we aim to harness this energy and create a meme coin that not only captures the essence of the digital age but also pushes the boundaries of what is possible in the crypto world. The push for X account membership to access X Money could also be part of the effort to attract more users to the platform. When Musk acquired X (then known as Twitter) in 2022, he said he planned to turn it into an “everything app” to offer multiple services. The bitcoin price has surged higher over the last year, helped by Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Wall … Musk first started talking about a vision for making X a financial platform right after he took over the company.
While traditional payment systems often face criticism for high fees and sluggish processing times, X Money aims to solve these pain points by providing an intuitive and cost-effective alternative. X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, announced the digital payments tool on X’s platform on Wednesday, highlighting a few features that are expected to debut later this year. Since Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it X, there has been widespread speculation that he could add support for bitcoin, dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies in a similar way PayPal PayPal did in late 2020. Elon Musk’s X chief executive Linda Yaccarino has said payments will be coming to the social media company Musk bought and rebranded from Twitter in 2025 after the company has slowly built up state licenses to handle transactions.
Nima Owji, an app researcher, told Tech Crunch that one of the big knocks against X Money currently is that it wouldn’t be available in every U.S. state when it launches this year. This, Yaccarino said, was “another milestone” in creating the “everything app” that Elon Musk envisioned when he purchased the platform — then known as Twitter — in a blockbuster $44 billion acquisition in 2022. X CEO Linda Yaccarino said the partnership with Visa was the first step toward creating X Money accounts that will debut later in 2025 and will allow for secure and instant funding to the wallet via Visa Direct.
