X Chat’s standalone app isn’t the only new service X is testing this week. The company has also started offering invitations to select users X money payment servicewhere was previously tested internally among the employees of X. These invitations, however, were not made in the standard way. Instead, X owner Elon Musk teamed up with William Shatner (yes, the actor) to invite people to the beta in exchange for a $1,000 donation to Shatner’s. charity which supports children’s and veterans’ organizations.
In X, the “Star Trek” actor. information sharing about the X Money service and its beta invitations, held available via online auction on Monday. Musk republished one of Shatner’s posts on his own feed, simply saying “X Money.” Musk too republication another user’s post about X Money, adding, “This is going to be big.”
THE auctionnoted Shatner, was conducted with Musk’s blessing after Shatner received payment from Musk through the X Money app. (A screenshot showed Musk sending him $42, a playful sci-fi reference: Number is, in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the calculated answer to the meaning of life.)
X also offered 42 invites to the X Money beta to those who donated to the auction.
After receiving a notification, the auction winners will be able to see a link to the X Money service appears in the app, just below the link for Premium. They will also be among the first to receive the X Money Metal Debit Card with their username from X partner Visa, which helps boost the person-to-person payments aspect of the service.
The addition of X Money to X is part of Musk’s plan to make the social network more of an “app for everything,” offering a variety of features including private messaging, payments, creator content, subscriptions, videos and more.
Screenshots posted by Shatner on X showed the X Money interface with three tabs: Account, Rewards, and Activity, along with buttons to make deposits, send money, and submit requests. Users also have the option to set up direct deposit to earn APY, the screenshots show. (One screen showed the option to earn up to 6.00% APY.)
User deposits are held by Cross River Bank, member FDIC, and are insured up to $250,000 per person, per a screenshot posted by Shatner.
X Money itself is not an FDIC-insured bank, but collects money transmitter licenses in the US. X now has licenses in more than 40 US statesand, at X’s public all-hands meeting in February, Musk told staff that the service would enter a limited external beta in a month or two before rolling out globally to all users.
With X Chat, the company hasn’t just released a new link to X, it’s experimenting with giving the messaging service its own standalone app. Potentially, X Money could also have its own app to better compete with others in the space, such as Venmo, PayPal, and Cash App.
Musk’s interest in payments spans decades, having founded an online financial services startup called X.com in 1999, which later merged into the company that became PayPal. After acquiring Twitter in October 2022, Musk renamed the company X less than a year later, as a tribute to his early beginnings.
