According to
Financial Times, the company has been applying for the necessary licenses to become a payment platform in the US. The report also mentions that Esther Crawford, Twitter’s director of product management, has been working on the infrastructure of the new service. The report notes that Musk wants to turn Twitter into an “everything app.”
Musk has said he wants Twitter to offer fintech services such as peer-to-peer transactions, savings accounts and debit cards, as part of a master plan to launch an “everything app” that incorporates messaging, payments and commerce. In 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, one of the first online banks, which later became part of payments giant PayPal.
While Twitter’s new payment platform will first work with regular currencies and payment methods, the company has plans to add support for cryptocurrencies in the future. The platform would essentially compete with PayPal and even Apple Pay, which lets users not only pay in stores, but also transfer money between them.
Of course, it’s unclear whether Twitter will be able to compete with other companies that have been in this market for much longer. The company is also
likely to face scrutiny from regulators.
