Filing of Documents Reveal Twitter Plans for Payments, Debit Cards

It is no secret that Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner has plans of turning the social media platform into a global version of popular Chinese internet platform WeChat. The New York Times reported this week that Twitter Inc. submitted registration papers with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to allow it to receive payments.

During a Twitter Spaces audio podcast on Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the new ‘Chief Twit’ provided a complete description of the company’s operations. During the program, he discussed how Twitter intends to enable monetization for creators on the platform.

Musk detailed on how verified Twitter users who pay a $8 monthly subscription fee will be authenticated by the payment mechanism, saying:

“Now we can say like, ok, you’ve got a balance on your account, do you want to send money to someone else within Twitter? … And maybe we pre-populate their account with and say, ok, we’re gonna give you 10 bucks, and you can send it anywhere within Twitter.”

Users who have authenticated bank accounts linked to their Twitter accounts would be able to leave the system and move their Twitter balance away from the network, Musk said, adding:

“Then the next step would be to offer an extremely compelling money market account to get extremely high yield on your balance.”

Twitter could start to accept debit cards, cheques, and basically anything according to the new Twitter CEO. Operating a payment service would put Twitter in direct competition with PayPal, which Musk helped build.

Musk previously stated his desire to create X, the “everything app,” and his acquisition of Twitter will very certainly hasten the development of X by a handful of years, according to the CEO.