X Works With Visa To Offer Real-Time Payments

X plans to offer Visa-powered X Money Account in US later this year as it seeks to develop ‘everything app’

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A Visa card and a laptop. Image credit: Unsplash
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The deal is X’s first under a plan by owner Elon Musk to turn the service, formerly known as Twitter, into an “everything app” similar to China’s WeChat, which offers everything from communications to messaging to livestreaming and financial services.

The payments programme is part of a feature called “X Money Account” that the platform plans to launch in the US later this year, chief executive Linda Yaccarino said in a social media post.

The offering is to provide an in-platform digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments connected to a user’s debit card, with an option to transfer funds to a bank account, she said.

Social networks displayed on a smartphone. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Pinterest, X, Visa
Image credit: Trace Le Blanc/Pexels

‘Everything App’

Yaccarino called the deal a “milestone for the Everything App” and promised other announcements around X Money this year.

Visa said the services would be powered by Visa Direct, its instant money transfer service, and would be available to X Money Account users initially in the US.

The service may launch as early as the first quarter, and X is trying to secure deals with other financial services, according to a report by CNBC citing an unnamed source familiar with the company’s plans.

One of the top use cases for X Money is to allow users to accept payments and store funds without the involvement of external institutions, the report said.

The companies made no initial indication about launches outside the US.

Musk envisaged an “everything app” as far back as the late 1990s when he launched a start-up called X.com that eventually merged into PayPal.

In 2021, as Twitter, the company launched a tipping feature that allowed funds to be sent to other users via third-party services such as PayPal, Cash App and Venmo.

The following year, a few months before Musk’s takeover, Twitter worked with payments processing company Stripe to trial cryptocurrency payments to users via the USDC stablecoin.

Diversification

Other social media platforms have been making aggressive moves to diversify their offerings, with Facebook parent Meta Platforms, for instance, offering shopping, games and dating features.

In 2019 Meta announced an international cryptocurrency-based payments system known initially as Libra and then Diem, but abandoned the project in January 2022 over worldwide regulatory concerns over financial stability, money laundering and fraud.

TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance has achieved success with livestreaming e-commerce on the platform’s Chinese equivalent, Douyin, and has seen major sales with a TikTok version of the shopping features.

After launching in September 2023, TikTok Shop’s US sales surpassed two major brands, Shein and Sephora in 2024, according to a 2025 consumer trends report by Coefficient Capital and journalist Dan Frommer.

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