The social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), enjoys a global reach of 600 million monthly average users. Remarkable to us, the daily user base may surge to 1 billion during high profile events, such as sporting contests and political elections. So, when X announced a new instant money transfer solution with Visa on January 28th, we took notice.
X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, has stated this is “the first of many big announcements” related to X Money in 2025. X’s payment service, X Money, in collaboration with Visa Direct, will enable secure and instant funding to a user’s X Wallet from a bank account by linking their debit card for P2P payments. All the sender needs are the recipients X handle. One immediate use case for X Money is payment to content creators and businesses on the X platform.
Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion and during the interim he has stated he wants to turn that platform into an “everything app,” similar to China’s WeChat, which seamlessly integrates social media with payment services. Long term, X intends to include all aspects of a consumer’s financial life, a user won’t need a bank. Near term, news sources have suggested a high yield savings account and cryptocurrency integration may be in the offering.
X Money, in order to achieve the fastest possible ramp up, may very well work with legacy payment providers. However, the higher the volume X Money achieves the less they’ll need from the rest of the ecosystem. International remittance, domestic point-of-sale and e-commerce transactions are frequently mentioned as high-priced pain points. X’s universal connectivity and unfathomable scale may eventually put some of those legacy participants under pricing pressure (i.e. PayPal).
Through the easily downloadable app, the X platform has room to grow their user base to 7 billion smartphones in operation globally. Furthermore, Elon Musk’s sister company, SpaceX, has launched over 6k Earthlink communication satellites into orbit with an initial deployment of nearly 12,000 planned and potential expansions up to 42,000 satellites. This extensive network aims to achieve comprehensive global coverage, including remote and underserved areas worldwide. Yet another sister company, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), already offers Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity, is also a distribution point for X platform users. X has big plans in FinTech and we look forward to going along for the ride.
X Platform and User Demographics:
● 300 million daily active users
● Top five countries by user base: The United States 106 million, Japan 69 million, India and Indonesia both at 27 million and the UK 26 million
● 350,000 Tweets/posts sent every minute generating 100 billion impressions per day
● Approximately 15% users are American (a positive for remittance)
● Average user spends 34 minutes and 6 seconds on X daily
● Most X users (58%) are under 35 years old
