Elon Musk has been doing what he can in recent weeks to increase Twitter’s revenue and improve the company’s profitability. Several more or less likely ideas have already leaked to the network, but this one is reportedly at an advanced stage of implementation.
“FT”: Elon Musk wants to make Twitter a trading platform
As recently as November last year, Elon Musk managed to register Twitter with the US Treasury Department as a payment processor. Now the company has started to apply for more licensing permits throughout the United States, which are necessary to handle users’ money.
Some of the formalities are still pending, but Twitter hopes that the licensing procedures will be completed this year, according to one of the informants associated with the case. The next step will be to submit similar applications and obtain permission to trade money in other countries.
Preparations for the launch of Twitter’s new business are also reportedly underway inside the company. Elon Musk entrusted this task to Esther Crawford, the billionaire’s trusted person and director of product management, who rose quickly after the change of ownership of the platform. Crawford also became the head of Twitter Payments, which the former authorities of the platform founded in August 2022. The team led by Crawford is to prepare, among other things, all the architecture needed to handle monetary transactions.
Musk already knows what the new service is supposed to look like
The billionaire’s new idea is also probably quite expensive. As one investor told the newspaper, Musk allegedly tried to raise additional funds from investors late last year to create a “super application” for processing payments.
It is still not known how exactly the new service will work and what will be its degree of connection with Twitter as a social platform. “FT” claims that Musk wants Twitter to offer services similar to current fintechs, i.e. account-to-account transactions with the ability to send messages, but also savings accounts and debit cards.
Interestingly, it may turn out that the new Twitter business will start to compete with e.g. PayPal, a company founded in 2000 by the merger of Confinity with the online bank X.com, which Elon Musk founded in 1999.
However, for Musk’s idea to work, it is necessary not only to obtain all permits, undergo numerous inspections and ensure that all activities comply with the letter of the law, but also – and perhaps above all – to gain the trust of Twitter users. And it hasn’t been the best lately.
Source: Gazeta
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