The social media platform X plans to get into the peer-to-peer payment business. The company made the announcement in a blog post Tuesday, saying the service will allow “more user utility and new opportunities for commerce, and showcasing the power of living more of your life in one place.”

What You Need To Know

  • X plans to launch peer-to-peer payments, the company announced in a blog post Tuesday

  • The post did not provide details about when the service will be available or how it will work

  • Elon Musk founded an online payments company in 1999 that later became PayPal

  • About 93% of Americans use peer-to-peer payment apps

The post did not provide any additional details about when the peer-to-peer payment service will be available or how it will work.

Globally, the peer-to-peer payment market is worth $2.21 trillion, according to Precedence Research. It is expected to grow 18% annually through 2032, at which point it will be valued at $11.62 trillion.

A P2P payment service from X would mark the second time Elon Musk has been involved with such an endeavor. In 1999, the current X owner founded an online payments company called X.com that merged with the startup that would later become PayPal.

PayPal remains the most popular peer-to-peer payment app, followed by Cash App, Venmo, Zelle and Apple Pay, according to a September 2023 LendingTree survey. About 93% of Americans use peer-to-peer payment apps, the survey found. The most popular transactions are shopping online, paying for services and splitting expenses.

In its blog post, the company said “X is not just another app — it’s becoming the everything app, seamlessly uniting experiences into one interface, for everyone.”

Since Musk purchased the company formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, X has been reinventing itself with myriad, oftentimes controversial, changes, including renaming it to X last July.

In 2023, X did away with news headlines and embraced video-first citizen journalism. It also floated the idea of charging platform users a small monthly fee to combat computer-operated bots on the site and added audio and video calling features, as well as a new artificial intelligence search assistant known as Grok.

In addition to launching peer-to-peer payments, the company said 2024 will be focused on a handful of key areas, including the increased use of AI, a new feature that will allow users to see dissimilar posts so they’re exposed to content that challenges their perspectives and partnerships that will increase advertising.

In November, multiple advertisers, including Apple, Coca-Cola and Disney, stopped advertising on the platform following Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic post. X is currently valued at about $19 billion, following a 15% decline in usership and a 60% drop in advertising revenue since Musk took over.