X, the platform previously known as Twitter, is adding support for wallet and mobile payments marking “another milestone” in the road to become the “everything app.” The service, which is called X Money, will debut later this year for users in the U.S., according to a post made by chief executive officer of X Corp., Linda Yaccarino. X has onboarded Visa as the “first” partner, the first of many big announcements about X Money this year.
You can think of X Money as a potential rival to something like Google and Apple Pay. There is no word on if and when X plans to bring “X Money” to India, but if it does, it would also have to compete with local apps like Paytm, PhonePe, and even WhatsApp.
Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Financial Services has also started to dip its toes into the space with the beta launch of its JioFinance app that includes a comprehensive suite of services, including UPI transactions, digital banking, and loans on mutual funds.
At launch, X Money will allow users to make peer-to-peer (P2P) payments while “X Wallet” will allow for secure and instant funding via Visa Direct. Yaccarino mentions that users will also have the option to transfer funds to their bank account “instantly” with the promise that more features are probably in the works and coming soon.
X Money was always on the horizon for X, as part of Elon Musk’s—who is owner, CTO and executive chairman of X—sky-rocketing ambitions to eventually turn it into an everything app on the lines of China’s WeChat, a one-stop-shop for anything and everything. It is one of several customer-facing features that X has added in the recent times following a big push into videos that began last year with a standalone TV app followed by the launch of a dedicated feed for vertical videos to take on TikTok few weeks back. The rollout of the latter kicked off from the U.S., and has since made its way to other markets, India included.
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