By
Kseniia Klichova
April 29th, 2024
When Musk took over the social media giant last year, he revealed his plans to make the platform an everything app, offering users opportunities to “send money anywhere in the world instantly in real-time”.
Elon Musk, the visionary entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) and SpaceX, is spearheading a groundbreaking initiative that aims to revolutionize the way people manage their finances. During an all-hands call with X employees on October 26, Musk provided a compelling vision for the company’s future, stating that by the end of 2024, the platform will serve as the central hub for all financial activities.
Elon Musk Says No Need for Bank Accounts
According to a Verge report, Musk’s ambitious plan encompasses every aspect of financial management, including payments and securities. The billionaire business mogul disclosed that the goal is to render traditional bank accounts obsolete, offering users a comprehensive suite of financial services.
“When I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life. If it involves money, it will be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it’s not just like sending $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account,” Musk said during the in-house call.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino joined Musk in the meeting, sharing the same optimism as the billionaire entrepreneur.
Yaccarino said the envisioned transformation would become a “full opportunity in 2024”, to which Musk responded: “It would blow my mind if we didn’t have that rolled out by the end of next year.”
PayPal Is a Less Complete Product
During the internal meeting, which lasted more than 45 minutes, Musk also talked about his dot-com-boom-era online bank, X.com, which eventually became part of PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL).
The billionaire tech mogul said he co-authored PayPal’s business roadmap with David Sacks in 2000. However, the US-based payment processor is yet to implement all the essential features outlined in the document, calling it an “incomplete product”.
“The X/PayPal product roadmap was written by myself and David Sacks actually in July of 2000. And for some reason, PayPal, once it became eBay, not only did they not implement the rest of the list, but they actually rolled back a bunch of key features, which is crazy. So PayPal is actually a less complete product than what we came up with in July of 2000, so 23 years ago,” explained he.
It is also sensible to presuppose that the X platform will also support crypto assets. Elon Musk is known as a Dogecoin fan. That’s why it is highly likely that in 2024 X will make headlines by introducing DOGE and other cryptocurrencies.
X Secures Money Transmitter Licenses in the US
When Musk took over the social media giant last year, the billionaire CEO at Tesla said he planned to make the platform an everything app, offering users opportunities to “send money anywhere in the world instantly in real-time”. On that note, the company is actively pursuing the acquisition of money transmission licenses across several states in the United States.
Musk also told X employees during Thursday’s in-house call that he hopes to get other necessities to help the company achieve its goal of becoming a financial hub in the next few months to facilitate the implementation of these services.
While the company is currently seeking operational licenses in different US states, the social media giant has received approval from Arizona, Michigan, Missouri, and New Hampshire to offer payment services.
In August, Coinspeaker reported that the company obtained a virtual asset transmitter license in Rhode Island to enable it to provide crypto payment services to users.