X, formerly known as Twitter, plans to launch a peer-to-peer payment feature this year, the company announced in a Tuesday blog post.
”We will launch peer-to-peer payments, unlocking more user utility and new opportunities for commerce, and showcasing the power of living more of your life in one place,” the post stated, among other plans.
The post comes just weeks after X owner Elon Musk discussed his payments plans in a Dec. 21 conversation with Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood. Ark Invest is an investment management firm that has invested in Musk’s companies such as Tesla and X. Musk said that San Francisco-based X was waiting on state officials to approve the licenses it needs to launch a payments feature.
“I would be surprised if it takes longer than the middle of [2024] to roll out payments,” Musk said during the conversation, which took place on X’s audio streaming platform. He also said X had received licenses in a majority of U.S. states, which Wood repeated in a Dec. 28 interview with Bloomberg.
However, X’s own website lists just 15 state licenses, 14 of which are also listed on the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System. The 15th license is from the state of Florida, which does not list money transmitter licenses on the NMLS database, but lists the license on the website for the Florida Office of Financial Regulation.
The most important state money licenses, for the purposes of his payments plans, have yet to grant X licenses, Musk said. “It’s irrelevant until California and New York approve us,” Musk said during the interview. He did not go into detail as to why those states in particular were important.
X also did not respond to requests for comment that were sent to a general press email address.
Musk also told Wood that he was not aware of any obstacles to X launching a payments feature. However, the state approvals paused for nearly 90 days last year after New York City law firm Walden Macht & Haran wrote a Sept. 8 letter to officials of all 50 states alleging X was “unfit” to hold money transmitter licenses.
X also did not respond to requests for comment on the letters sent by Walden Macht & Haran.
The delays followed a “chaotic” start at X for Musk, he said. X had not submitted required documents until the middle of last year, he told Wood. “Things were obviously quite chaotic, especially for the first few months,” he said. “We were a bit late in submitting our money transmitter licenses, and I essentially thought ... we had done it, but we had not done it.”
Musk, one of the richest billionaires in the world, was the co-founder of X.com, an online bank that became part of the San Jose, California-based payments juggernaut PayPal.
