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Rumors Swirl that Musk is Creating a Payment Processing System that would Compete With PayPal

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2 years ago

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On Tuesday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk hinted that a Twitter payment processing system is in the works that would directly compete with PayPal, a company Musk co-founded.

“The man who reinvented the payment system back in 1999 is all set to do it again,” tweeted ‘DogeDesigner’ on Twitter.

Musk responded to the tweet, agreeing that he would be reinventing the payment system again.

“It’s gonna be great,” Musk said.

Back in November during a livestream meeting with Twitter advertisers, Musk opened up about his vision for a Twitter payment processing system, stating that users would be able to send money to other people on the platform.

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Check out what Tech Crunch reported:

Elon Musk detailed his vision for Twitter’s plan to enter the payments market during a livestreamed meeting with Twitter advertisers, hosted on Twitter Spaces on Wednesday. The new Twitter owner suggested that, in the future, users would be able to send money to others on the platform, extract their funds to authenticated bank accounts and, later, perhaps, be offered a high-yield money market account to encourage them to move their cash to Twitter.

The new remarks followed a report this morning by The New York Times which confirmed Twitter last week had filed registration paperwork that would allow it to process payments. The report cited Twitter’s filing with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), noting that a business would need to register before it could conduct money transfers, exchange currency or cash checks.

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He stressed that, initially, Twitter would need to make fundamental technology architecture changes in order to better support video. The company was recently reported to be working on a “Paywalled Video” feature that would allow creators to charge for access to their content. This suggests Twitter could be moving into a space where it may try to compete more directly with various social media video providers, like TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and others. The Washington Post saw mockups of this concept where a tweet with a video could be unlocked for as little as $1.00. It said creators may be able to choose from preset prices, like $1, $2, $5 or $10 when paywalled videos were launched.

As a result, creators would end up with a cash balance as they began to monetize their content.

In addition, Musk noted that Twitter’s paid verification program would help in its plan for payments because anyone who subscribed to Twitter Blue would have already been verified by the “conventional payment system.” That is, Twitter Blue subscribers have to sign up using a credit or debit card and have their payments processed through the app stores’ in-app purchase system, which helps to combat fraud.

On the topic of bringing cash onto the Twitter platform, Musk said: “Now we can say, okay, 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…and say, okay, we’re gonna give you 10 bucks. And you can send it anywhere within Twitter.”

Musk also said that he was open to the idea of offering high-interest rates to users who keep their money in a Twitter savings account. This would directly compete with Apple and PayPal.

“The next step would be this offer for an extremely compelling money market account where you get an extremely high yield on your balance,” Musk said.

“And then add debit cards, checks and whatnot and…just basically make the system as useful as possible. And the more useful and entertaining it is, the more people will use it,” he added.

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