Elon Musk’s vision of bringing payments to Twitter continues to take shape as the social media giant moves closer to offering a payment processing service. According to a report in the Financial Times on Monday, Jan-30th, the company has formed a team led by Esther Crawford, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of TwitterPayments LLC, to map out the architecture for integrating payments into the platform.
Crawford, who previously led the introduction of the controversial $7.99 Twitter Blue subscription service as Director of Product Management, has been tasked with overseeing the regulatory registrations and state licenses necessary to make Twitter eligible to process payments.
With this effort, Twitter is positioning itself as a big contender in the digital payment space. Furthermore, the company is taking concrete steps toward obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals in the United States at the state and federal levels. They aim to secure full licensing as a payment processor in the United States within a year and then expand internationally. To this end, Twitter has already:
- Registered with the U.S. Treasury as a payment processor.
- Applied for financial regulatory licenses in several states.
The payment system is expected to focus on fiat currency initially, but Musk hopes to add cryptocurrency integration.
Musk’s Vision
Musk’s vision for Twitter’s payment platform includes a wide range of services, including peer-to-peer transactions, debit cards, and even offering high-yield returns on users’ balances. The CEO hopes that the payment platform will serve as an “everything app” that facilitates payments, commerce, and messaging and allows users to purchase products directly through the platform.
Musk further explained his vision and possibilities by stating that after users have paid for a Twitter Blue premium subscription, “we can say you’ve got a balance on your account. Do you want to send money to someone else on Twitter? And maybe we pre-populate the account.”
Furthermore, users can link their online bank account to their Twitter account, allowing them to exit the system if they wish.
Musk also stated that the next step would be to offer an attractive money market account with high yields on their balance, followed by the addition of debit cards and cheques.
The move towards offering financial services marks a significant step for Twitter and could change how users interact with the platform.
Twitter and Crypto Integration
Musk said, “Money is fundamentally digital at this point and has been for a while. It would make sense to integrate payments into Twitter, so it’s easy to send money back and forth.”
Musk’s statement highlights his belief in the increasing digitalization of money and the need for seamless integration of payments into Twitter.
In addition, the deployment of fiat is the initial focus of his plan for digital payments, and he is already planning the second layer of this platform to allow for crypto integration. With Elon’s strong support for cryptocurrency, integrating crypto into the payment system will likely be a significant step forward in its adoption and use in everyday transactions. By integrating crypto into the payment system, he hopes to make it more accessible and user-friendly for the general public, leading to its wider adoption and usage in day-to-day transactions.
The increasing popularity of cryptocurrency and Musk’s plan for integrating crypto into the payment system could bring in a new era of digital transactions. It remains to be seen how this plan will shape up in the future.
In conclusion, Twitter’s registration as a payments processor and Elon Musk’s vision for bringing financial services to the platform signifies a new chapter for the social media giant. With Twitter’s dedicated user base, integrating a payment platform could offer a new source of revenue for the company, and cryptocurrency integration could attract even more users. And despite many tech companies’ failure to enter the payments space, Musk’s ambitious plans suggest he is committed to making Twitter a central player in the digital payments ecosystem.
