BREAKING: Elon Musk’s Twitter Applies To Be Payment Processor To Potentially Support Crypto

By Kevin • January 30, 2023 9:56 pm • Comments

It has recently been revealed that Twitter has now applied for regulatory licenses which would allow the company to become a payment processor.

This is part of Elon Musk’s vision to turn Twitter into a “super app” which includes allowing users to facilitate payments on the social media platform.

Some online sources indicate that the type of payments that would be include may potentially include using crypto for payments as well, but nothing has been officially confirmed by the company yet.

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However, we already do know that Elon Musk has stated that he wants to support fiat payments on the platform first so crypto will likely be “step 2” of Musk’s vision.

This is not the first time that Musk has incorporated crypto into his businesses as Tesla has also accepted digital assets like Bitcoin in the past.

BitcoinMagazine reports:

Musk has previously accepted bitcoin for his Tesla electric vehicles, but later retracted the ability due to concerns about renewable energy.

While there are no firm plans to implement this interoperability, Musk has firmly reiterated since his taking over of the social media firm that he wants to see it become more of a generalized “super app.”

This multifunctionality approach would benefit greatly from the increased functionality of cheap, instantaneous payments using a platform like the Bitcoin Lightning Network.

Twitter previously tested “tipping” through the Bitcoin Lightning Network via Jack Mallers’ Strike, later adding the ability for users to add a Bitcoin address to directly receive their tips.

The overall plan is that allowing the social media platform to facilitate payments will basically introduce a new source of revenue for the company.

Given the broad audience reach that Twitter has, if support for crypto actually becomes possible, it would become a huge milestone for crypto as this would enable the industry to truly start to be mainstream.

The current timeline for this becoming a reality is still unknown as the company will need to get regulatory licenses approved by both the US Treasury as well as various state agencies.

It has also been noted by some speculators that the employees within Twitter that are working on the high level architecture needed to facilitate payments on the platform have had prior experience working on crypto products.

This is another clue which may indicate that crypto may be included in the long-term future.

Financial Times concludes:

Esther Crawford, a fast-rising lieutenant to Musk inside Twitter, has started to map out the architecture needed to facilitate payments on the platform with a small team, said two people familiar with the company’s plans.

While Twitter had set up a subsidiary, Twitter Payments LLC, in August last year before Musk took over the company, Musk recently appointed Crawford, Twitter’s director of product management, as the chief executive of Twitter Payments.

Musk has said he wants the system to be fiat, first and foremost, but built so that crypto functionality could potentially be added at a later point, two people said.

In an early pitch deck to investors in the acquisition deal in May, seen by the Financial Times, Musk said he aimed for Twitter to bring in about $1.3bn in payments revenues by 2028. The pitch deck was first reported by the New York Times.

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