Twitter has received money transmitter licenses in the US states of Michigan, Missouri and New Hampshire to enable in-app direct payments. This is an important step in Elon Musk’s plans to transform Twitter into a comprehensive “everything app” that, similar to China’s WeChat, combines various functions such as payments, social elements and messaging.
While Twitter is currently struggling with the impressive launch of Meta’s new microblogging service – and is already threatening lawsuits against the company behind Threads – the company has recorded a victory on another front. Because Twitter’s parent company X Corp. secured the first licenses in three US states to enable money transfers in the app.
Direct payments on Twitter are paying into Musk’s plans for an “everything app.”
How Fortune reports, Twitter has received money transmitter licenses in Michigan, Missouri and New Hampshire in the past few weeks. This is the first step towards direct payments in the app, which is a key part of Elon Musk’s broader plan for an “everything app,” which could also rebrand Twitter as part of this transition.
Musk’s long-standing vision is to create an all-encompassing mega-app that offers similar utility to Chinas WeChat offers. The latter has become indispensable for billions of people in this region due to the many functions and connections. On WeChat, for example, Chinese users buy train tickets, pay their bills, do grocery shopping and at the same time use the social elements of the app. Musk sees the same potential in Twitter, and has previously told his Twitter investment partners that he believes the payments could bring the company up to $1.3 billion by 2028.
Background: Musk founded X.com, an online bank that soon merged with another company to form PayPal, in 1999. The letter has appeared in other business ventures over the years: SpaceX, Tesla’s Model X, the three Xs Holdings company and “Project X,” the official SEC-recognized name for the $13 billion bank loan for the Twitter purchase. After completing the Twitter acquisition in October 2022, Musk claimed that purchase would “speed up” the creation of an “everything app”, which would be named after the letter X. Such a “super app,” according to Musk, could be like China’s WeChat, which combines messaging. Social networking and payment app with a billion users. The functions of Twitter would play an important role in this megasize app.
Licenses for direct payments on Twitter: How promising is the supposed milestone?
With payments as a core functionality of Twitter, he would be a big step closer to his goal. But the challenge is that Musk’s plans are not an original concept, and many online platforms are already trying to integrate payments to expand their offerings and solidify their connected presence. Meta is the most direct example. Already in 2016 undertook Meta great efforts to add more functionality to the messenger, aiming to make its popularity a “Western WeChat”. Ultimately, however, it turned out that Messenger users didn’t want to make payments or play games — or actually do anything other than send messages in the app. This eventually forced Meta to scale back the feature push in favor of streamlining the Messenger UI, while the company also faced significant setbacks in facilitating in-app payments in multiple markets. Meta has since focused on WhatsApp and the developing markets, with payments forming the backbone of this push — but development is far from complete. For Musk, this means that even with three-state approval, Twitter likely still has a long way to go to build this element and create a more viable path for payments and purchases.
The signs for Musk’s advance are therefore rather unfavorable – but his business connections and his knowledge of the payment landscape could give him decisive advantages and ultimately let him create an app à la WeChat ahead of Zuckerberg and Co.
The “better” TweetDeck is back
Twitter has also backed out again and brought back the old TweetDeck; That’s according to a tweet by social media expert Matt Navarra, citing an article by The Verge. The more popular version of TweetDeck is making a return, along with free API access enabling third-party Twitter clients.
Larissa completed her studies in media in Bielefeld, has lived in Hamburg since 2017 and has been an editor at OnlineMarketing.de since 2022.
2023-07-10 09:00:21
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