Elon Musk’s intention is to make Twitter the “Everything App” which means Twitter would gradually evolve from its primary social media space into other services and now it looks like the first could be payment. As difficult as it seems for Twitter to compete in the payments space, Elon Musk is not new to this space. Musk is hoping to take on services like PayPal (Venmo), Google Pay, Apple Pay and even Facebook Pay by applying for a license in the payments space.
Elon Musk is a PayPal co-founder and some are already excited at the possibility of Musk floating a rival service. One of Elon Musk’s Twitter predecessors Jack Dorsey is now into the payments space with his company Block (formerly Square).
In the past few months, Twitter has been dealing with acquiring the expected licenses to have the option to get its users to start using its own payment platform instead. This would allow users send and get cash between accounts similar to what Facebook is doing in some countries with Facebook Pay.
Since Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, about half of the top 100 advertisers have fled the microblogging site with more scaling back their advertisements on the site. Elon Musk quickly pushed for Twitter Blue and opened the door to just about anyone who would like the blue check mark for $8. The rollout was chaotic which led a temporary suspension of the service.
Musk in an appeal to advertisers assured them that Twitter would not become a free for all platform where all kinds of abuse thrive.
At its peak, Twitter was raking in about $5b in ad dollars but that since taken a hit as advertisers fled. However, it looks like more users than expected are paying for the blue checkmark which could be a good thing for Twitter revenue when the numbers are released. It makes sense that Elon Musk would want these billions processed through a payment gateway Twitter controls and because he found other services like Starlink and Tesla, the payment gateway could be extended to those services thereby extending the popularity of such services.
There is also the political consideration whereby many on the right in the United States would rather close their PayPal accounts for an alternative by Elon Musk.
It is not clear at this time if the Twitter application would be eventually considered but it is already causing a big buzz online.
