Twitter now wants to become a payments platform

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Since Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter, the company has been looking for new ways to increase its revenue. But now it seems that Musk is about to take a step that will take the company’s services far beyond just a social network, as he’s interested in turning Twitter into a payments platform to compete with Apple Pay and PayPal.

Twitter working on its own payment platform

Back in November, Musk had already detailed his plans to enter the payments market during a meeting with Twitter advertisers hosted at Twitter Spaces. The Twitter owner suggested that users would be able to transfer money to other people on the social network. Since then, no further details about this plan have been revealed, but Twitter is still actively working on it.

According to Financial Times, the company has been applying for the necessary licenses to become a payment platform in the US. The report also mentions that Esther Crawford, Twitter’s Director of Product Management, has been working on the infrastructure of the new service. The report notes that Musk wants to turn Twitter into an “everything app.”

Musk has said he wants Twitter to offer fintech services such as peer-to-peer transactions, savings accounts and debit cards, as part of a master plan to launch an “everything app” that incorporates messaging, payments and commerce. In 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, one of the first online banks, which later became part of payments giant PayPal.

While Twitter’s new payment platform will first work with regular currencies and payment methods, the company has plans to add support for cryptocurrencies in the future. The platform would essentially compete with PayPal and even Apple Pay, which lets users not only pay in stores, but also transfer money between them.

Of course, it’s unclear whether Twitter will be able to compete with other companies that have been in this market for much longer. The company is also likely to face scrutiny from regulators.