Twitter Payments are Coming, as Company Seeks Licences: Report

Twitter users could soon be able to send and receive payments through the popular social media platform, according to a report from the Financial Times.

Per the publication, Twitter is actively building a payments feature for its flagship social network. The company has also started applying for regulatory licences to handle and process payments in the U.S.

Twitter’s planned payments integration is being developed by a small team led by Esther Crawford, a rising star at the company, said two sources.

Crawford has been appointed CEP of Twitter Payments, a subsidiary the social media giant created last year. The team is making steady progress, including devising a vault for storing and protecting the user data that would be collected by the payments system, the people said.

Bringing payments to Twitter is yet another move from its new owner and CEO, Elon Musk, to create new revenue streams as the company hemorrhages advertisers and, with them, its primary source of income. Other efforts include the revamped Twitter Blue subscription, which allows users to pay for a blue checkmark.

In his original investment pitch for Twitter last year, the PayPal cofounder said he would turn Twitter’s payments business into a $1.3 billion USD segment by 2028. Payments were also part of Musk’s vision for “Twitter 2.0.”

Musk has previously said he wants Twitter to offer fintech services, including peer-to-peer transactions, savings accounts, and debit cards. This would ultimately tie into his overarching objective of turning Twitter into an “everything app,” similar to China’s WeChat.

According to a regulatory filing, Twitter already registered itself as a payments processor with the U.S. Treasury in November. The company is now applying for state licences needed to offer a payments service, in hopes of accomplishing U.S. licensing within a year.

After getting approval to launch in the U.S., Twitter plans to expand internationally. The payment system will reportedly launch as a fiat-only service, but Musk wants it built to allow for crypto functionality to be added down the line.