By Manya Saini
(Reuters) – Payments giant Visa and Elon Musk’s X are partnering to offer direct payment solutions to customers of the social media app, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.
The deal comes as the billionaire continues his efforts to transform the X platform into an “everything app”, aiming to offer a wide range of services, including messaging, social networking and payments.
Visa will be the first partner of the X Money account, under which customers can instantly fund their X wallet and connect their debit cards for peer-to-peer payments, the source said. Customers will also get the option to instantly transfer funds to their bank account from X Money.
The digital payments ecosystem in the U.S. has grown rapidly since 2020, driven by the pandemic, which pushed people online and increased the demand for convenient peer-to-peer payments, typically via smartphones.
Traditional card networks Visa and rival Mastercard have ramped up investments in the digital payments space and are now competing with tech firms such as PayPal, Block’s Cash App, Apple Pay, and Google Pay for a slice of the lucrative market.
Musk, who in April 2022 clinched a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter and later rebranded it as X, has signaled plans to model it as a “super app”, similar to China’s WeChat.
The concept, often described as the Swiss army knife of mobile apps, is popular in Asia, and tech companies across the world have tried to replicate it.
“2025 X will connect you in ways never thought possible. X TV, X Money, Grok and more,” X CEO Linda Yaccarino wrote in a post last month.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)
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