Twitter has reportedly applied for regulatory licenses for a payment service in the United States aimed at competing with PayPal and other Apple Pay, reports the Financial Times. The development of this tool would be supervised by Esther Crawford, the current director of product management at Twitter.
Initially, this solution would make it possible to send money to another user of the social network, before integrating other products such as savings or a card to make physical payments. The service should first support the usual currencies (dollar, euro, etc.), but Elon Musk does not rule out adding cryptocurrencies later, according to sources familiar with the matter cited by the business daily.
New services to diversify Twitter’s revenue
The launch of such a feature is part of the desire of the boss of Tesla and SpaceX to diversify the sources of income of Twitter, which he acquired last year for 44 billion dollars. The tycoon wants to move quickly as the platform’s advertising revenues have fallen by 40% in one year, many advertisers having deserted it following the multi-billionaire’s sensational decisions, such as the dismissal of half of the company’s employees at the last fall. Problem, 90% of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising.
To stop this financial hemorrhage, Elon Musk has launched a paid subscription and intends to deploy a new service “All-purpose” called X, for which it aims for 104 million subscribers in 2028.
So little has been said, the project is nevertheless easy to identify. Presumably, the X platform would look like a super-app bringing together many services, including Twitter, on the model of WeChat in China. It could therefore make it possible to make purchases and payments peer-to-peerthus explaining the launch of a payment functionality in the coming months.
