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Elon Musk's X Money launches April 2026 – but is it a payments product or a revenue pivot? We break down the Visa Direct integration, the WeChat super app myth, and whether X can earn the trust financial services demands. Plus: a CBDC ban buried in a US housing bill, what a permanent digital dollar block means for stablecoin infrastructure, and how MiCA shapes X Money's global ambitions.
Host: Louis Thompsett
Guests: Kieran O'Connor & Callum Williams
Producer: Anaya McDonald
Editor: Anaya McDonald
Host: Louis Thompsett
Guests: Kieran O'Connor & Callum Williams
Producer: Anaya McDonald
Editor: Anaya McDonald
Creators and Guests
What is The Payment Expert Podcast?
Welcome to The Payment Expert weekly podcast, brought to you by SBC Media. Each week we analyse the news driving the global payments industry forward; the innovation, the infrastructure, and everything that has to happen to make it all possible.
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But if Musk is comparing what he's trying to build with X-Money to that WeChat model, X doesn't really have all those other things. Hello and welcome to the inaugural edition of the Payment Expert podcast, your source for the latest news, insights and analysis on the payments industry. I'm Lewis Thomson, news editor here at Payment Expert. And with me today is Callum Williams and Kieran O'Connor, who are senior journalist and business journalist at Payment Expert. Joining me today guys to uh discuss the latest updates from across the industry. Callum himself over in Berlin today, but glad you could join us. I suppose one of the most notable updates from the past week was uh Elon Musk finally announcing the launch of X-Money, which will become available for early market access from around April 2026. It's got the backing of Visa. Just talk us through, your take on the news when it launched. about what X-Money is from your perspective, what it could be and what's Musk's wider play here. Yeah, I'll kick things off Lewis. Thank you. Thank you for the intro. off. Yeah. So, so Musk has, he's announced the, April 20th, 26th obviously with the backing of Visa. Now the back, this is coming through Visa Direct, which is the global money movement service of Visa. And it will enable peer to peer transactions via pre-funded digital wallets within the X app. Now this has been. kind of like the the the vision for what Elon Musk has wanted for X since it was named Twitter back when he he acquired it in October 2022 and obviously coming from his roots when he co-founded PayPal in the late 90s. it's it's it's gone through beta testing. I that started within about May 2025 with a closed group of selected users. The The beta testing is now continued to develop and roll out with a number of selected users. And I do believe that it will roll out. It is expected to roll out in the US first before more of a global launch will be underway. and yes, it does have 41 money transmitter licenses in 41 US states. So he's already got some of the clearances there in order to be able to legally store send. and receive money on behalf of users. it is a pretty much a pure peer to peer payment facilitation service with obviously it might have arms to grow even further. sure. I mean, I know he keeps pointing, doesn't he, to that WeChat kind of model, but obviously WeChat works in over in China and it's the infrastructure for day to day life. People use WeChat to pay their rent, they split bills, they go down a street and tip a vendor or what have you. um That's all within one app and there's no real alternative ecosystem competing for that kind of behaviour. But if Musk is comparing what he's trying to build with X money to that WeChat model, X doesn't really have all those other things. It's the super app comparison that he's leveraging. Is that really useful or do you think maybe he's being a bit misleading with that assessment? Yeah, I would say he's definitely been misleading. I think it's a very oversimplified comparison to make. Like you said, Louis, WeChat is sort of used for paying rent, utilities. I think it's even used for getting taxes and accessing government services. And in China, there are no real competition when it comes to sort of apps like that. Whereas, you know, in the Western world, we've got Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp. There's all these other social media platforms. that X has to compete against. And another thing which I think is important to sort of point out is that WeChat uh and China as a whole, QR codes when it comes to payments are huge and they're sort of a cornerstone of sort Chinese daily life and that sort of allows these sort of street vendors and businesses uh to accept WeChat pay pretty seamlessly, even offline where I'm not too sure in the US and the Western world We're sort of at that point, yeah, we are using it a bit more but we're not at that point. So the hurdles that X has to sort of become this WeChat, in my opinion, are a bit uh too big. He's got the competitors to compete against and he's also got the trust and the sort of trust issue. I don't know about you guys but myself, I don't know how much I would trust using one single app. for all my financial assets, especially when it's sort of been born from Elon Musk and sort of the history he's had in recent years. Yeah, that's a good point, I think, Kieran, as well. Obviously, you've got, when you look at likes of WeChat, it's about integrating things like insurance in their financial services, as well as a load of other industries as well. But how the regulatory approach applies to each industry, particularly in the US, is vastly different, the laws that apply. how you can... get them to kind of integrate into one app is a bit of a challenge, I suppose. I don't know if you have anything on that calendar you want to, wanted to add. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, don't think it's going to be anything like WeChat Pay. Um, or WeChat in general, I suppose. I mean, it will be, I think it will roll out as a pure peer to peer, uh, payments facilitator. And I think that's where it's going to start. Obviously there's, there's reports now that they might introduce crypto and stock trading data tools. So no, they're not going to act as a crypto brokerage or a stock brokerage but they're providing in real time in-app analytics for both crypto and stocks. So that is obviously the next evolution, I guess, of ex-payments. no, I think he's obviously got a clear goal in mind of being a true financial super app. I think lending and loans may just only come within the next several years but There's obviously a clear ambition for this, for X to become a super app that everyone can use. And obviously it's got a massive global user base. And yeah, I think it's also a way to diversify revenue. I mean, I suppose if we're being a little bit cynical, I know what you were saying, Kieran, about, you wouldn't trust, and maybe others wouldn't trust, you know, a uh Musk run uh money account, financial account. I mean, if you're, if you're being cynical, I suppose a lot of the the income that X gets is from its advertising, I think about 70, 75%, something in that region. Could you look at it as though um this new product line, this decision to launch X Money is a revenue diversification away from the typical things that X is known for, which is one of the world's leading social media platforms. um Do you think it is really about building a genuine payment infrastructure for Musk if we take this kind of devil's advocate route or is it about kind of giving people and advertisers a different story about what X is and different means to uh generate income, whether that be through advertisement still or any kind of paid products or launches? And I definitely think you've got a point there. think in my opinion, it's more about survival. Okay. Then sort of anything. think when he took over the ad sales plunge by about 50%. And obviously there was a lot to do with politics in that and other stuff. But it obviously left him with a big issue. And one way you can sort of fix that is by sort of saying to his advertisers, well, we don't really need to rely on you if we go into this payments thing. If we evolve into this payments app, well, this everything app. And by charging fees on peer to peer payments and potentially over financial services, as Callum mentioned before. Um, he sort of unlocks a new, uh, revenue stream, uh, that potentially, uh, you know, um, allows him to no longer rely on these, on, these advertisements. yeah. Yeah. I mean, I suppose the other thing is he's obviously got a visa direct integration there as well. So in a way you could almost say, you know, he's kind of, he's not building his own ex payment roles. It's more sort of sitting on top of an existing infrastructure there with visa. So it's. could also argue it's more of an interface really rather than a direct um payment product. But um I suppose Musk may then argue that, you know, if you're the end user, that distinction maybe doesn't really matter so much. think ultimately it revolves down to the actual adoption from the user base. I think like Kevin mentioned before, think the security and the trust you have as a consumer when it comes to paying. services or when it becomes to receiving payments is paramount, right? It's probably arguably the number one thing a consumer would look to when it comes to that. Obviously X, I still call it Twitter, I don't know about you guys, but... It's hard to tell sometimes, isn't it? Yeah. Which one? Well, yeah, think when it comes to X and it comes to Twitter, and especially under Elon Musk's time as the owner, there has been a lot of stuff he's introduced such as like paying out to content creators or to accounts and hitting certain engagement marks and then getting paid off the back of that and I think maybe the integration of Visa Direct may start there with some of those accounts who receive money from just getting in a lot of engagement from posts, I'm not too sure but when it comes to a more of wider roll out in terms of everyone including us three here now like Do we really believe that this is going to be a way of just us asking, me some of the money over X money? Is that going to be something that is going to be widely adopted? And I'm not too sure to be honest. Yeah, mean, does have a very, very loyal sort of user base. I think there's a lot of people who are obviously very critical of it, but it does have a very low user base and I don't think them people are really going to care. that X isn't the ones that control the network. mean, Visa is a very sort of reliable network to use. Obviously, it may run into issues technically. It can't really control the speed or the cost of the transactions. It sort of relies on Visa. If there's an heritage of Visa, it's got that sort of issue. It doesn't really have much control. But if it can just focus on the user experience and sort of the UI. I don't think average consumers are really going to care to be honest with you. Yeah, true. mean, it kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier, Kieran, about, it's more, I suppose it's more people think of Musk really. I mean, he'd said previously in, I think it was around May, 2025 that, you know, when people's savings are involved, extreme care must be taken, which is, suppose for him, quite a noticeable thing to say given he's run X since the acquisition. There's been workforce cuts, advertiser exodus. I suppose when you look at the volatility that's been surrounding X ever since he's taken charge, it does kind of circle back to your point maybe around, do people trust X because they trust Musk or not? uh Perhaps maybe it's the not, but I'll let you guys battle that one out if you have different views. I don't know. Maybe you both think the same thing. I don't know what to think at the minute. I think there is obviously a maturation and a feeling out process when it comes to these types of new payment methods. I Apple Pay, it may seem like it came on the scene pre-COVID and then just took over everything when it came to contactless payments, but contactless payments have been around since like the early to mid 2000s, right? of physical card payments was still the predominant payment method during those times. Now, if we're talking about in app payments is kind of like the natural step forward from contactless payments, then it does require a large scale consumer. And even word of mouth as well, like even if I don't know, Kieran said he wants to send me some money over X money over X money and it settles, it works out. The process is seamless. Then yeah, I think that that would then incentivise more people to use ex-money. But like everything, it's maturation, it's a process and a bit of word of mouth as well would go long way in helping to grow ex-money, I guess. Sure. And Kieran, I suppose you're down the line of if people don't trust Musk, you don't think the adoption will kick in? Listen, I mean, a few people, I think the majority of people won't necessarily transition to using X money as sort of Callum says, so just send me the fiver on X money, I think you might get a few looks like, definitely not. But there is a huge creator community on X at the minute and that's sort of been one of the avenues they've gone down since they've lost a lot of advertisers. People are using the verified account, different now than what they used to. You can pay for your verified account and then you can bring in money from sort of interactions and tweet interactions on your tweets and your posts. So maybe that's where he starts this money and this sort of money initiative. If them creators use the next money to get paid and then they keep that money inside an ex account and they're more likely to use it in that ecosystem, maybe there's that. But at the minute, I think one of the big challenges they're going to have is maybe distancing themselves from Elon Musk's political views. and also his reputation to sort of bring in this mainstream audience which is just another reason why we sort of called or sort of criticised the comparisons of X-Money to WeChat because WeChat, without sounding, I don't want to get in trouble but WeChat, the Chinese population are pretty much, they don't have much choice, they have to sort of use that for everyday life, it's just the norm. When there's a choice and it comes to X-Money, I assume a lot of people will just stick with the other apps they're already using and the other services that these sort of neo banks are already sort of bringing out. yeah. Yeah, sure. I mean, it is a more diversified market. can put that and you pointed well to the kind of politics of the moment and, you know, payments in general in America when it comes to those regulations and laws at the minute, quite up in the air. mean, recently last week there's been sort of a The Senate has passed a major housing bill, which obviously has nothing to do with payments whatsoever. So why on earth would we mention it? But it's because within that bill, there's been slated a of a CBDC provision inside, which calls for there to be sort of no central CBDC in the US. What do you guys make on that approach from America not to go for a central bank digital currency as opposed to uh other? nations which is still in the process of uh adopting testing for a CBDC launch. Well, there's, mean, don't want to say the most rhetoric thing ever that knows this one size fits all approach, but there is obviously a clear line in the sand when it comes to digital currencies in which global markets are opting for. We see in China, they've obviously clearly opted for a CBDC in the digital one. And then obviously now with some of these other US regulations that have passed, like the Genius Act and obviously now with the Clarity Act in motion. that Donald Trump's administration clearly incentivizes stable coins and cryptocurrency. Where are CBDC, where the concerns with CBDC's lie is obviously the ability to view transaction history and view people's, where these transactions are going using a digital representation of let's say the dollar for instance. And now obviously Trump and his administration have pretty much said, oh no, we don't want to look into your transactional history. This is This is against our values as Americans and really championing crypto as this as this pure peer to peer removal of intermediaries. And yeah, I think it's it's a it's a difficult one to suggest whether a CVDC would be good or bad. Europe are obviously going for the digital euro. But then obviously this pushback with the Corvallis project that are going to launch bank backed euro stablecoins. So sure. Yeah. think abandoning potential digital dollar, we'll see how that transpires. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what you guys think of the fact that, know, they've obviously, I mean, it happens a lot in American lawmaking where you can have a broader bill around in this instance, you know, housing, then it can, you can sort of tack on things which may seem unrelated. I don't know if you, what you guys think about there maybe being how this, how this bill is part of the Senate's being pushed through uh in this way, tied to a broader housing bill. What does it suggest? I mean, it's quite big for payments, but obviously for anyone looking at a housing bill, it's not much of an issue. Yeah, I don't know about you guys, but I think it's quite sneaky. I understand that this sort of happens a lot in the US, but I do think it's kind of sneaky and a bit uh strange. It's how I view it from across the pond. But I think it... I'm not surprised. We know that Trump has been very against the BDCs and I think the fact that he's put a permanent ban on this just sort of shows that he's trying to push the private sector. He's really trying to push the private sector which does open the door to things like ex-money and Musk sort of putting these new innovative platforms and ideas out there. So I'm not too surprised but yeah I think it's does just show what the US is thinking and Yeah, but it plays into those kind of broader political spectrums. think Trump himself has said he uh won't sign any new legislation until Congress passes the Save America Act. obviously that's being held up in Congress along with various other things. Okay, guys, well, we're close to running out of time. finally, just to sort of loop back to X Money. mean, for you both, if X Money launches... April and then starts looking beyond the US. It might run straight into Meeker in Europe, which has a very different set of expectations around the e-money licenses, consumer protections. Is that environment or the multiple environments outside of the US an obstacle to X-Money becoming the global payments platform that Elon Musk is sure that it will become? Yeah, it depends. It depends on if it's still classed in itself as a payments company or social media company, because I think we know that social media companies tend to, lack of a better word, get away with quite a lot of regulations. Obviously, we see with fraud at the minute and a lot of payment service providers want more onus and more responsibility placed upon social media firms to bear the brunt of some fraud methods circulating on those platforms. I think when it pertains to ex money in Europe, I think I don't think they'll have that much of a challenge entering the market. It'll obviously come into a market that is obviously trying to be regulatory first and you've got to go by the book. So whether they do introduce crypto payments, stablecoin payments, they will have to run into Mika. They'll have to run into what certain guidelines are presented for certain stablecoins and certain cryptocurrencies. And it'll need any e-money license in any of the EU countries. And I just think in order to, I think in order to Musk to realize this everything app exchange, think he'll have to, he'd have to look down the barrel and think, well, what is going to, what is going to happen in the next couple of years that is going to really transcend payments. Stable coins have been noted, cryptocurrency payments have been noted. So, He's more, he's the world's richest man for a reason, I guess. I mean, you don't have to agree with his, you don't have to agree with his political views, but he's, I think he's got experience in this. Okay. Go on, Kieran. Do have a contrarian view to CSL? I don't have a contrarian view. think one of the, one of the big issues for me, I mean, we cover a lot of fraud and payment expert and I do wonder if maybe some of these European lawmakers and sort of these regulators will sort of, you know, go to X and say, We really, you know, you might have passed these, which is a high bar for compliance by the way. It's not going to be very easy for them to pass it. But I do wonder if some of these regulators and lawmakers maybe bring in the discussion about fraud and say, listen, we've been trying to work with you for a number of years now on these issues with fraud. I know you're coming to us and you want us to give you a license on this and sort of, we're going to, you want to become one these payments apps. Um, maybe they have a bit of leverage there. Maybe they can use that relationship to actually finally get to the bottom of the APP fraud issues that the UK and the EU, um, a bit have been facing. So maybe just to add on as well, sorry, the risk that, uh, don't be missed. Don't be, um, I mean, Matt Zuckerberg is trying to introduce stable corn payments across WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. So the, the, the, he's, he's, he's the only one right now. He was trying to. get into the P2P payment wave at the moment and obviously with digital currencies as well. also with stablecoins at the minute going through clarity at talks. uh It's a wait and see, I suppose, in terms of how maybe the likes of Zuckerberg, et cetera, move. Well, thank you very much, guys. Thanks you to Callum and Kieran. But unfortunately, that's all we have time for today. Join us next week when we hear more from Callum, who's been over at Merchant Payment Ecosystem uh in Berlin. So we'll hear more from him. And of course, as always, make sure you're subscribed to the Payment Expert podcast wherever you do get your podcasts as we bring you plenty more insights and analysis over the coming weeks and months. And for the latest news as it happens, head to paymentexpert.com. See you guys soon.