X Plans to Launch ‘Money’ in Limited Form This Year

While Elon Musk’s plan to convert X into a payments hub, from which many expanded functions will arise, has seemingly been delayed in its initial approval process, X is still pushing ahead with the concept, which it’s now calling “X Money” as opposed to “X Payments”.

Earlier in the week, in a post welcoming the new year, X CEO Linda Yaccarino noted that X Money would be among several launches planned for the coming months.

I’m not sure that any of these are going to “connect you in ways never thought possible.” But hyperbole aside, the mention of X Money suggests that X is still pushing ahead with this, despite not reaching Musk’s original timeline of a 2024 launch.

That’s at least in part because X hasn’t been able to gain a money transmitter license in New York, which Musk himself identified as a key state for its initial payments push.

X has been granted payment transmitter licenses in 38 U.S. states thus far, but X withdrew its application for a license in New York early last year, after a legal filing was made in opposition to its payments push, which questioned the “fitness and character” of X to hold such authority.

The main concern noted within that filing is that X has “troubling and deep ties” to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, due to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman being an investor in Musk’s X project. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the filing alleges, has a long history of brutality and repression, which it claims have been “fueled and enabled” by the platform itself.

That, seemingly, has impeded X’s capacity to gain approval in all U.S. states. But now, according to new findings in the back-end code of the app, X is planning to push ahead with X Money anyway, by launching it in selected U.S. states to begin with.

As you can see in these code snippets, X has added notes relating to the availability of X Money “in your state.” Which suggests that X is now looking at a regional roll-out, not a nationwide one, while it works to address the noted concerns in non-approving regions.

That would enable X to get the ball rolling on the project faster, though the limited availability will significantly restrict usage. And this is before X even begins to consider an international launch, where Elon Musk’s own divisive political stances look set to pose significant regulatory challenges in approval for payment licensing.

So X Money is coming, but likely only in 38 U.S. states. And after that, it may be enabled in others, but also maybe not, while international expansion is seemingly not even on the cards at this stage.

That means that Elon’s “everything app” plan will be severely impeded, and it seems somewhat arbitrary to launch the option in limited form, given that the audiences most likely to benefit from such are outside the U.S.

As a quick recap, Elon’s “everything app” vision for X stems from the ubiquity of WeChat in China, with Chinese users effectively using WeChat as their digital identity for all kinds of transactions. As a base comparison, wherever you would use your credit card, most Chinese people use WeChat instead, which provides various benefits for citizens, in terms of convenience, while also establishing WeChat as a foundational tool for everyday interactions.

Back in the year 2000, when Musk was working in the emerging digital payments space, he came up with his “everything app” plan, which he initially pitched as a future roadmap for the development of PayPal. The PayPal team didn’t go with this, and it’s stuck in Elon’s craw ever since, and he remains dedicated to the potential of the concept as a transformative shift in the banking/payments space.

Though it is worth noting that the same approach hasn’t worked for anybody else.

Meta has also tried to follow WeChat’s lead, and establish Messenger as a foundational framework for transactions (twice, in fact), but it never caught on with Western consumers, while it’s also tried payments on WhatsApp in emerging markets, but has been met with regulatory pushback.

As such, it doesn’t seem like the prospects for Musk’s vision are that great either way, while the broader distrust in Musk, and the X platform, will also limit opportunities, aside from these licensing restrictions.   

But maybe, if there’s some way that Musk and Co. can facilitate fee-free, simple transactions in the app, there is opportunity there for X Money, on some level.

I suspect that the scope of this will be far more limited than Musk envisions, even if it were to gain full approval from each region, though that won’t even matter if Musk’s own actions continue to raise questions among approving groups.

So, you may be able to access X Money in 2025, but maybe not.

But either way, I doubt that it’s going to be a big deal for most users.