In a major push for Elon Musk’s superapp vision for X, Visa will partner with the social media platform to enable real-time payments directly from its app.
This was confirmed by X Corp CEO Lina Yaccarino via a post on the platform, signalling that an X Money Account payment service will be coming soon with the help of Visa’s peer-to-peer (P2P) payment solution, Visa Direct.
While the details of the partnership have yet to be fully disclosed, it is believed that the global payment network will introduce Visa Direct to allow X users to perform P2P transactions in real-time from their Visa debit cards and transfer funds directly to the social media platform.
The initial roll out of the X Money Account will be available to US customers first and is expected to launch this year. It is currently unknown whether it will be available to other countries during its launch.
A Visa statement on X read: “We’re excited to partner with @XMoney on the launch of X Money Account. Visa Direct will make it possible for US X Money Account users to fund and transfer money in real-time with their debit card.”
Visa joins the ‘everything app’
Alluding to Yaccarino’s comments, labelling X the “everything app”, Visa’s backing is a major development in X owner Musk’s year long plan to form into a superapp capable of multiple functions all in one singular platform.
Similar to the popular Chinese superapp WeChat, Musk has been pressing to create his own version since his acquisition of the then-called Twitter for $44bn in October 2022.

Leveraging his experience in the payments industry from his time as owner of PayPal, Musk was seeking a money transmitter licence from the US Treasury, which was obtained to provide payments to its users in 31 US states.
Though Musk had superapp-style plans for PayPal back in the 90s, social media offering payments and even its own native digital currencies is a trend that has only gained traction over more recent years.
In 2019, Facebook introduced LIBRA, its own native digital currency whereby users can transfer funds to the platform to then convert into tokens. This sent shockwaves across the US financial industry with fears that Facebook’s multi-billion customer base adopting LIBRA could cause major financial instability to the US dollar.
Despite LIBRA being shut down and never truly getting off the ground, it was a stark realisation that powerful tech giants now have the influence and infrastructure to make significant inroads across payments and financial markets.
Whilst Musk is not planning to launch any native digital currencies on X yet, his pursuit of money transfer and moving capabilities on the platform is indicative of the surge of embedded finance solutions being integrated into non-traditional financial entities.
This has caused competition within the payments landscape to intensify and with X’s seismic user base being capable of sending money directly to one another on the app, X Money represents a new major competitor to the industry.
Following Visa’s involvement, Yaccarino labelled the partnership a “milestone” and hinted it was just the “first of many big announcements” for X Money.