Elon Musk’s payments ambitions for the X social media platform are making progress according to reports circulating around industry media on Tuesday (6 October).
TechCrunch, a technology news outlet, reported that X is apparently working on adding a payments function to its navigation bar. The outlet cited X posts by app researcher Nima Owji, who made the discovery.
Owji subsequently told TechCrunch that he has found that X is developing payments features including “transactions, balance, and transfer.” Adding a payments functionality to the app is a long-running ambition of Musk.
The South African billionaire and tech tycoon first bought Twitter, as it was called at the time, in April 2022, concluding the takeover in October of that year. Twitter has emerged as one of the world’s most widely used social media platforms since its foundation in 2006.
Musk renamed the platform X in July 2023, and shared his ambitions for X/Twitter to transform into what he calls an ‘everything app’. Enabling users to make payments via the platform is central to these plans.
As it stands, X/Twitter already has some limited payments functions. Users are able to pay for subscriptions and enhanced memberships, for example, as with other social media platforms.
Musk’s ambitions go beyond this, however. The outspoken and sometimes controversial businessman hopes for, as Owji’s findings suggest, a platform where people can send each other money, conduct transactions and build up balances.
Launching peer-to-peer payments has been made a top priority for X/Twitter this year, alongside greater use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.
Given Musk’s background in the payments sector this is not surprising. He is one of the key figures in the foundation of PayPal, which came to being when Musk’s X.com financial services site merged with software firm Confinity in 2000, taking on its current name in 2001 – since becoming one of the biggest corporate names in the global payments sector.