X Exploring Payments Cards With Trading Function Coming ‘Soon’

X’s CEO says the social media platform will “soon” offer an investment/trading option.

“You’ll be able to come to X and be able to transact your whole financial life on the platform,” Linda Yaccarino said in an interview with the Financial Times (FT) Thursday (June 19) at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.

“And that’s whether I can pay you for the pizza that we shared last night or make an investment or a trade. So that’s the future.”

Yaccarino added that the company was considering the launch of a X debit or credit card, which could arrive as soon as this year.

As the FT noted, the push into financial services is part of X owner Elon Musk’s plan to turn the platform into a hub for messaging, payments and commerce, similar to China’s WeChat.

The company has already announced plans to debut X Money, a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment service in partnership with Visa, later in the year.

Writing about the Visa deal earlier this year, PYMNTS examined whether it would give X Money an edge over neobanks. That report pointed to PYMNTS Intelligence’s research showing that digital wallets are finding wide embrace across the world as a main vehicle for payments.

Depending on where you look, PYMNTS added, these wallets are serving as a central point of access for a range of nonpayment activities, such as storing credentials. In the U.S. 48% of consumers use their digital wallets for online shopping, while 39% use them in-store.

“In other research, we’ve found that consumers were voicing that they’d trust a number of Big Tech names to store their payments credentials, which would pit those firms against traditional banks,” that report said.

Yaccarino also told the FT that X Money would launch in the U.S. before being rolled out in other countries, and said that the service would let users purchase merchandise, store value or tip creators on the platform.

“A whole commerce ecosystem and a financial ecosystem is going to emerge on the platform that does not exist today,” she said.

Meanwhile, this week also saw reports that xAI — the Musk-owned artificial intelligence (AI) company that owns X — expects to spend $13 billion this year against revenues of $500 million.

The company shared this data with investors while trying to raise $9.3 billion in debt and equity, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, citing unnamed sources.

That report said the rate at which the company is raising money and spending it is typical for the AI sector, because of the financial demands of the technology, which requires server farms and specialized chips.