Elon Musk’s X/Twitter acquires Payment Services License in 3 US states

On March 20, 2024, X Payments LLC, the arm of X responsible for driving the peer-to-peer payment business, secured three more licenses for money transmitter activities.

The three states providing approval were New Mexico, Oregon and Illinois, bringing the total number of approved states to 22. The licenses are required for sending and holding customer funds, similar to how PayPal, Venmo and Cash App work.

It is also important to note that Musk has previously served as the CEO of PayPal, so he is acquainted with the business and the bureaucratic processes involved.

Musk has been working on making X an “everything app” since he bought the company in 2022, with the addition of payments serving as a major contributor to that vision. However, strong regulatory scrutiny makes it difficult to offer money-transmitting services to users, which is delaying Musk’s plan to offer payment services.

Adding three new states to the list of approvals is positive for the company. With nearly half of the U.S. states willing to allow X to transmit money, there is somewhat of a precedent that could make it easier for others to provide licenses and bring X closer to Musk’s goal.

Dogecoin open interest increased by $800M in 3-days

Elon Musk’s affinity for the Dogecoin meme community was brought to fore again this week as crypto investors speculated on the potential upsides if Dogecoin is adopted as the native currency to power the X payments ecoystem.