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The Almighty Buck Social Networks Twitter

X Announces Peer-To-Peer Payment Service Will Launch In 2024 (forbes.com) 109

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
SonicSpike shares a report from Forbes: X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, announced it would begin rolling out a peer-to-peer payment service similar to Venmo or PayPal this year -- a feature the social media site's billionaire owner Elon Musk has long pushed as part of his plan to develop an "everything app." X officially announced the new feature in a blog post, touting the new service designed to enhance "user utility and new opportunities for commerce." The company did not give a timeframe on when the new service would be available, but Musk previously told Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood it could launch as early as "mid-2024."

According to the company, the new payment service will "showcas[e] the power of living more of your life in one place," as owner Elon Musk continues to promote X as a future "everything app" capable of handling social media, video and other original content on the same site. X Payments has registered to do business in at least 32 states, according to public records, and has acquired a money transmitter license needed to process payments in 10, TechCrunch reported in December.
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X Announces Peer-To-Peer Payment Service Will Launch In 2024 More

X Announces Peer-To-Peer Payment Service Will Launch In 2024

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  • As well as MuskOx can run a company, I'm sure as hell not giving him my payment info.
    • The terms for Twitter's existing patron to creator payments system has a clause which states they don't have to actually pay creators the money patrons sent them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      As well as MuskOx can run a company, I'm sure as hell not giving him my payment info.

      So not very well at all then?

      I really cant see this lasting. We're not talking about Space Karen fudging a few environmental ordinances, we're talking the worlds monetary, banking and financial regulators here. If what SpaceX does with the environment is the equivalent of streaking at a soccer game, what Musk plans to do with a payment platform is like flopping your wedding tackle out onto a table at which, the worlds top Mafia Dons are eating dinner.

      He won't even be a snack for the banking and financ

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        >I really cant see this lasting.

        Sanity check: When Musk bought twitter, and these same people were screaming that this can't last, it's going to stop working, go bankrupt, etc, did you see it lasting?

        Because you should always check if your predictions of this kind last or not. It will help you be less wrong in the future.

        P.S. In EU, SEPA is a thing. So at least here, you don't need to attach payment system to a credit card. There's legislation that is specifically intended to make new payment systems eas

        • Dude hes gonna be selling Twitter for parts within 18 months. He took a formerly successful advertising platform and ensured no one would want their ads seen there.

          You can always tell the people that think they're the smartest in the room and they are always wrong about at least that much.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            If you had even a shred of capability to be objective, rather than be fully captured by your impotent hatred and rage, you'd give Musk at least one thing

            He may be a lot of things, but he's not a corporate raider. It's just not what he has ever done.

  • Not falling for it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @08:40PM (#64151593) Homepage

    I'm not giving a social media company (especially ones run by anyone named Musk or Zuck) access to my bank account. Considering how their primary business is run, it'd be like if the city's sanitation department started selling sandwiches at the local landfill. Yum. /s

    Besides, Musk had his chance with X back in the day. He needs to spend less time chasing missed opportunities and more on worrying about his existing businesses. As it is, it certainly seems like he's got his fingers in too many pies.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by NomDeAlias ( 10449224 )
      You're clearly starting with your dislike of Elon then trying to work backwards to justify a boycott. Sure don't use it but why bother with the absurd virtue signalling about it? Your reasoning doesn't even make sense, he helped make Paypal it would be like buying a sandwich from a famous sandwich chef's latest restaurant. Musk had his chance with X? What does that even mean? It's at all time high usage and the move in to payment processing was telegraphed far in advance. You just don't like that he's

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Powercntrl ( 458442 )

        Your reasoning doesn't even make sense, he helped make Paypal it would be like buying a sandwich from a famous sandwich chef's latest restaurant.

        Except that the famous chef got out of the restaurant business, got into the landfill business, and now wants to get back into the restaurant business while still also running a landfill. Let's just say for the sake of the analogy that the landfill also isn't being run very well.

        Musk had his chance with X? What does that even mean?

        I was referring to the old X.com, PayPal's predecessor. It wasn't intentional on my part, but perhaps the ambiguity also serves an example of why branding is important and it was not the best idea to rename Twitter.

        You just don't like that he's expanding the business and making it less reliant on advertisers trying to force censorship.

        Twitter was usa

        • The famous chef got bought out and returned later. So what? Still has a history of making sandwiches. The analogy failed.

          Trying to use his history with Paypal here is hilarious. That was a major success for him. You aren't making any sense.

          You're just making stuff up because you don't like Elon. It's painfully obvious. The fact that you don't like Zuck either doesn't change anything. You likely do the same thing with him.

          • Re:Not falling for it (Score:5, Insightful)

            by edwdig ( 47888 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:08PM (#64151855)

            You're forgetting why he got kicked out of PayPal. He wanted to do the same stuff he's trying to do now and the rest of the executives realized he was an idiot, so they forced him out of power. PayPal was a success despite Musk being involved, not because of him.

            • Yeah. I'm not sure why the person is fawning so hard over Elon here. That's exactly what Musk wanted to do and that's just not how the market works here. It's WeChat basically but that model doesn't suit the US or EU consumers.

              In the US we had computers, we grew up learning all kinds of online things and everyone has kind of developed a preference for their online interactions as things grew. It's kind of an organic thing. In China, a lot of people's first computer was a smart phone. There was all thi

              • Its because of the corrupted finance system we have and how we have been trained that prevents this stuff. Having a trusted all-in-one app is a good thing BUT thats the thing, "trusted". I cannot do that with anything Musk is involved with. Even now he is bullshitting, as always, re timeframes.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                >It's WeChat basically but that model doesn't suit the US or EU consumers.

                Ignorant hater vs reality. SEPA came to be after a few EU delegations went to China and got to try WeChat. US has been long left alone in the antiquated payment systems and regulations that it has. EU has joined the rest of the world.

              • There is nothing to buy into a scheme.

                While your analysis about computers versus smartphone s is correct. I'm not aware that online banking is a thing in the US.

                Here in Thailand we have dozens of phone (app)/web based payment systems. WeChat/LINE/TrueMoney and: every bank supports PromptPay. PromptPay is government mandated standard of instant - cost free - peer to peer money transfer. Either via QR code or via phone number. Yes, if you have my phone number, you can sent me money. You do not even need to k

              • He had an idea that another company was wildly successful with yeah he's such a loser, totally.

      • Helped make PayPal? He was bought out by the company who became PayPal.

        Musk had his chance with X? What does that even mean?

        After he got bought out, he was made CEO. And then he renamed the company X. He wanted to make it an "everything" platform. He was fired 6 months later and the company was named PayPal.

        Having him involved with a payment platform is like hiring Jared to head up PR for a famous sub sandwich franchise.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        But PayPal is notoriously shit, and I pretty much stopped using eBay until they stopped requiring PayPal. It's the worst possible way to pay for stuff, not least because it screws up your legal rights due to you paying a middleman instead of the vendor directly.

        PayPal is a warning to stay well away from any future Musk payment systems.

        • EBay does jot require PayPal.
          You can pay how ever you want.
          Always could and always will.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by _merlin ( 160982 )

            Nope, for quite a while they required you to accept PayPal for most items sold on eBay. I just stopped selling stuff on eBay when that happened. Since then, they changed the fee structure to make it pretty much useless for people just occasionally selling stuff. It's only really useful for professionals using it as a storefront now.

            • Requiring to accept PayPal does not make other payment methods gone.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by _merlin ( 160982 )

                The GP simply said that they required PayPal, not that they required that sellers only accept PayPal. As a seller, you had no choice but to accept PayPal.

                • No. As a seller you might have been required to check a paypall box.
                  Most certainly you never where required to actually have a paypall account.
                  And the GP did not mention: it was in the US of bullshit.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by _merlin ( 160982 )

                    Most certainly you never where required to actually have a paypall account.

                    That is not true. Sellers were required to have a PayPal account linked to their eBay account, and required to accept payment via PayPal.

        • Sure there are plenty of reasons to criticize Paypal but that wasn't the point. The other person was trying to pretend like Elon has no history with the payment industry with an absurd analogy framing him as a complete outsider with no qualifications.

      • While that may be true (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:25PM (#64151885)
        You don't have to go very far from dislike of Elon Musk to get to not wanting to give him your payment details.

        Must have over promised and under delivered throughout his entire career. The most famous examples are hyperloop which was a scam to shut down High-Speed rail and overstating Tesla's range to overcome range anxiety. There's also the entire thing about telling people Tesla had self-driving cars when they did not.

        Furthermore he is paired down Twitter into a skeleton crew and the company has lost so much value because of him chasing away advertisers by openly praising literal neo-nazis while literally telling the advertisers to go fuck themselves that he simply does not have the capital to launch something as complex and with his intensity level of security requirements as a payment service safely.

        The only reason Twitter hasn't been hacked a ways from Sunday is that there really isn't any value in doing it except to take over a high profile account and there are just plain easier ways to do that. But the moment you put People's Bank account details behind something is slapdash as a Elon Musk product the economics of that change completely.

        Musk could get the capital to start a business like this from selling stock in Tesla or SpaceX but doing so would harm both companies and his shareholders would revolt (in spacex's case potential shareholders sense of memory services still a private company although I'm hesitant to call a company that wouldn't exist without government contracts private...)

        That means he's only other source of capital would be the banks and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that after losing literally billions of dollars to his hair brain scheme with Twitter that they're not going to be falling all over themselves to loan him money.

        This means the entire thing will be half-assed and understaffed and without the security resources to protect your money.

        Facts don't care about your feelings and the reality is there's no way that this works out for anyone signing up for it for at least the first five years.

        Ordinarily I'd say it was doomed to fail but for reasons I don't understand Elon Musk can get away with having a non-functional product and just lie about it openly even when the company in question is publicly traded and that's just okay. But that doesn't mean I'd be stupid enough to trust him with my money
        • There are indeed some valid criticisms unfortunately most of the criticisms here appear to only be fueled by a political dislike of the man.

      • You're clearly starting with your dislike of Elon then trying to work backwards to justify a boycott.

        This isn't Musk's first payment company. His previous effort: PayPal is on many people's boycott list already long before people even gave a shit about who Musk was. Actions speak louder than words, Musk's actions show that he is a really bad custodian of a payment platform. You analogy is correct if you're talking about buying a sandwich from a famous sandwich chef who has repeatedly gotten customers sick from bad food hygiene and incorporated his business in another country just to skirt the local food sa

        • Now that would be a pivot to criticisms with merit rather than pretending he has had no connection to the industry at all. Even your reasoning points out the analogy was a failure as you had to patch it for it to make sense.

          I'm not claiming Elon is perfect. I'm pointing out the irrational criticisms founded with political animosity.
    • Elon simply wants to replicate WeChat from China to the US. Its not that bad an idea if you have actual experience with WeChat in China, which has been doing all this for over 10 years.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Most people from US are still stuck in the system that's mostly based on technology from early 20th century in principle, and has regulations and safeguards aimed at keeping it that way. This is why it's a massive culture shock for people from most of the world moving to US and encountering the US banking and payment system. It's antiquated, inefficient and generally fucking awful. EU used to have a somewhat more modern but still pretty antiquated system, but then several committees and political figures we

  • "The everything app"?? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @08:55PM (#64151621)

    a feature the social media site's billionaire owner Elon Musk has long pushed as part of his plan to develop an "everything app."

    More like "the nobody-uses-it-anymore app".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      He's trying to turn it into a knock off of WeChat, which handles payments and a load of other stuff.

      I doubt it will work outside of China. When WeChat was introduced, many people didn't have bank accounts and very few had payment cards, so being able to pay with your phone and a WeChat account made sense. Most merchants adopted it, so it became the common way to pay for stuff in shops too.

      Musk is very late to the game and we already have plenty of much better payment systems in place. Nobody wants or needs

      • This is some criticism with merit rather than blind hate of Elon. In a world with a plethora of payment apps why would anyone want to use Twitter? I expect he'll have to sink some major cash upfront with an affiliate program to pay out influencers pushing signups. This will of course likely also increase spamming and scamming with people trying to trick others into sending them money on the app.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Look at how he has botched the roll-out of video on Twitter. Mr Beast (one of the biggest YouTubers) responded to a plea to put his videos on Twitter by pointing out that there is no way to monetize them currently.

          It's not like Twitter is in a position to offer much money either, given than all the big paying advertisers have left.

          • What video rollout? Twitter video was awful prior to Elon and that continues but has gotten a tiny bit better. At least the majority of popular videos don't freeze anymore but yeah its still not up to standard. What did he rollout? The live streaming? That's more of a relaunch of periscope.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawk ( 1151 )

          >In a world with a plethora of payment apps why would anyone want to use Twitter?

          And *that* is the crux of it.

          With the banks having introduced Zelle, a free service backed by accounts at insured banks, paid systems make little sense--inherently higher cost and less security and accountability by the institution.

      • I doubt it will work outside of China.

        Especially not in the US. We can't even agree on a single messaging platform that everyone uses, besides SMS.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Entrope ( 68843 )

          What the US really needs is a payment mechanism with better authentication than chip-and-signature (or mere contactless cards).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        At least in EU, politicians did their damnest to make a new WeChat. Legislation was created specifically with getting something like it that would work in EU banking system in mind.

        Problem is that there's really no large unified IT developer that could take this large task yet. Market is largely fragmented into small SEPA payment front end providers, none of which can get enough of a traction to become universal like WeChat payment system is in China. You'd need a pre-existing social network with a large ex

      • Musk is very late to the game and we already have plenty of much better payment systems in place. Nobody wants or needs his WeChat clone.
        Plenty? In the US? Certainly not.
        Better? In the US? Definitely not.

        Ever even used a mobile app, like google pay, in a supermarket?

    • Re:"The everything app"?? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Col. Klink (retired) ( 11632 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @10:45PM (#64151805)

      "Hey, I wanna pay you with X?"

      "Oh, that site run be the right-wing nut job who's famous for ignoring regulators, not paying his bills, and arbitrarily kicking people off his platform? Sure, my bank account would be safe with that guy!"

    • They've only really lost about 20% of their users (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:27PM (#64151887)
      But that still leaves millions and millions of people using it. The real problem is that the advertisers aren't likely to come back and the minimum interest payments on the debt he's servicing are very likely a couple hundred million more than the company's yearly revenue on top of all of the operational costs that no matter how many people you fire if you're still going to have to pay.

      Unless the Saudis buy it out and turn it into their propaganda Network I don't see how Twitter survives for more than about 18 months. The only downside is it's going to be around during the election cycle in America this year which is going to cause a lot of problems and maybe a shooting or two

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        I'm looking forward to hearing about how it's going to break in "current day plus six months" for foreseeable future. Well, not really, since this mantra is just boring at this point.

        • There's a Reddit forum dedicated to Twitter users where they can complain without being censored and it's full of people complaining about technical glitches. There's also a huge number of people complaining about things like CP and murder porn showing up in their feeds constantly. Twitter just fired another 30% of the moderation staff on top of what they already fired.

          For an application the size of Twitter it's best to think of it like a semi truck or a School bus. My buddy drives the school bus and he

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            It's almost like when your good old strategy of brigading and botting doesn't work, you brigade and bot harder on another site to complain about the first one no longer letting you do it.

            Now where have I seen this strategy before...

            Oh wait, entirety of pre-Musk's far left purges of wrongthinkers went exactly like that.

    • a feature the social media site's billionaire owner Elon Musk has long pushed as part of his plan to develop an "everything app."

      More like "the nobody-uses-it-anymore app".

      I've never bothered with using it, so I have no dog in this fight in that sense, but you realize that you sound insane, right?

      X/twitter is still the, er, twitter-like thing ... despite your hopes of herds of threaded mastodons roaming the land ...

      You sound like one of those people who says "oh, nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded ... "

  • This is going to go well. And by well, I mean it will be a complete flop, but somehow some big trove of investor money will keep being thrown at it.

  • 2024 - same year as Mars landing (Score:3)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @08:59PM (#64151625)

    Musk previously [said] it could launch as early as "mid-2024."

    Same year as the Mars landing [space.com], right?

    • Man oh man, why do I not have mod points for this? Hat tip to Sebby!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      I like how the story you cite starts with the caveat that you pretend isn't there. I quote the first sentence of the first paragraph of the story after headline claim that you chose to omit as irrelevant from the quote you deemed relevant:

      "If we get lucky."

      A bit dishonest of you, don't you think?

  • So⦠not using BTC (Score:2, Informative)

    by Plugh ( 27537 )
    Nor DOGE. Noted.
  • Call it P.

    Seriously, X isn't even a 'name', but so it goes. It can be XP, which is completely original too.

  • Suspended again! (Score:3)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday January 11, 2024 @09:20PM (#64151661) Homepage Journal

    I guess I shouldn't have said something about politics on the same day I had to go grocery shopping.

    • No company could possibly be stupid enough to suspend *all* features for misbehaving on the social-media side of things. Then again, it's Elon we're talking about here and X has been a litany of bad business choices so far. On the other hand, he's so beholden to the mighty dollar that maybe the fact that he gets money from your future transactions gets you a special level membership of "X looking the other way". Hard to say how this might play out.

      • Re:Suspended again! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @10:09PM (#64151743) Homepage

        No company could possibly be stupid enough to suspend *all* features for misbehaving on the social-media side of things.

        It wouldn't be the first time. Microsoft does it if you misbehave on Xbox Live. Getting your Apple ID suspended also locks you out of all things you had tied to it.

        • I've also heard cases where Google will just delete your account, and maybe other accounts they think you use as well, if you act up enough on YouTube. Including your email. Everything.

      • No company could possibly be stupid enough

        Literally every company owning a multi-integrated platform has shown to be this stupid. We've run multiple stories here on Slashdot where people have found out the hard way how interconnected their accounts are from companies such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Facebook. They have all locked people out of related services in the past.

        One account to rule them, one account to fuck them up if they get it banned on one part of a company's platform. - J.R.R Tolkien (at least if LOTSocialMedia were written toda

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Do you use iphone or android? Because both apple and google are known for locking everything down in some cases.

        A good example of google locking parents out of everything for months because parents sent a picture of their child's naked body to child's doctors during the lockdowns, which google's automation deems "child porn" and blocks the account with no reasonable resolution system available for months.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Gilmoure ( 18428 )

        Oops, it happened again.

        "Elon Musk’s X issues sudden temporary ban of eight journalists

        ‘I can’t think of anything I’ve posted lately that would be worthy of suspension,’ a journalist says "
        10 Jan 2024

        https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]

  • It will be interesting to see if Musk resists debanking [www.cbc.ca] efforts with this new project.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Unlikely, as such payment system generally need agreements with banks to function properly.

  • I do not dislike Elon, but why in the hell does he think that anyone cares about this? X is the even less successful version of Twitter and that is about all.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Musk's talent in being in a club of very few people historically who successfully identified significant underserved/unserved hole in the market and then produced a company capable of meeting that demand successfully. Most people who try to do this spend their entire lives and do not succeed even once. A small handful of people have succeeded once at this historically, and these are usually people who become very rich individuals from this. But those people tend to fail a tremendous amount of times just to

  • I am Enron's biggest fan. I just don't get what this app is possibly going to do for me that Visa / Apple Pay / PayID can't do.
    • Its not a new app, its a feature of an existing one making things "easier" and striving to be a one place to do all things social and purchasing. Sounds kind of good on paper tbh, having used WeChat in China, but its unlikely to work in the West. Too many middle men lining pockets for doing fuck all here.

  • I'm wondering if presidential candidates like Biden or Trump could use this to raise campaign funds and if they even know? Like why not?

  • Not interested, but makes sense (Score:3)

    by Chuck Chunder ( 21021 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @01:34AM (#64151981) Journal
    You can push megabytes of data about and hope to make some money on advertising attached to it or you can push kilobytes of data representing about money and directly take a percentage of that money as it whizzes past.

    Musk seems intent on turning Twitter into grifter-central, so perhaps won't be for "everyone" but I imagine it will capture at least a niche.

  • Twitter is history, ruined by the most incompetent management imaginable. Makes one wonder how Musk got anything else done at all.

  • of unbridled right wing hate, crypto scams and steroid ads. It has been hemorrhaging money at an ever increasing rate ruled by an unhinged silly person. Not exactly a candidate to become some kind of trustworthy payment hub if you ask me.

  • Why won't US banks do the same as Europe? (Score:3)

    by bungo ( 50628 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @08:30AM (#64152471)

    In Europe, banks already offer peer to peer payments. Open your banking apps, generate a QR code and then it is scanned by the other person with their banking app.

    Secure, as it's something that occurs using your own back and you don't give any details to a third party.

    Aren't the US banks going to introduce something like that? All of these third party apps that could be insecure wouldn't be needed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      Ir's called "zelle", started in 2017.

      Not all banks participate, but most do.

      It's financed mostly by the large banks. Not altruism; they have a vested interest in safe transactions.

  • Chasing the Wechat / Alipay Model (Score:3)

    by Koreantoast ( 527520 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @09:15AM (#64152577)
    My guess is he's belatedly joining Facebook and others in chasing the Alipay / Wechat model that provided highly successful in China. Essentially, they're trying to take ecommerce to the next step by becoming the complete interface between customers and merchants. The only problem with this is that in the United States, banks, credit cards, and large merchants, already weary of Silicon Valley, have watched the Chinese model in alarm, and they're going to fight tooth and nail to protect themselves from losing ground to Musk, Zuck, and others that are trying to displace them.
  • Yeah. Wow, that sounds like a really good deal.
    But I think I got a better one.
    How about I give you the finger and you give me my cat videos.
  • I wouldn't give my financial info to any Musk entity if it was the last one on Earth. I don't support bigots and liars.

  • I like that I can easily exchange money electronically. It's a great advance over the past decade over fiddling with cash and checks.

    That said, the problem is solved and works just fine with -- Venmo (but turn that stupid sharing feed off), Cash App, Apple Cash, Paypal, Bill.com.

    It's now just a thing that facilitates the movement to the other person. I don't need another. Elon, come with something more creative than this.

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