Twitter pushes forward with plan to turn itself into a payment platform

Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter back in late October of last year, the business mogul has been constantly looking for ways to make the microblogging company profitable. One of these is allowing anyone on the platform to have their own verified checkmark for $8 a month. And now, the company seems to be interested in becoming a payment platform to compete with the likes of PayPal, Venmo, and Apple Pay.

According to a report by the Financial Times, Twitter has begun applying for regulatory licenses to become a payment platform in the United States. Esther Crawford, Twitter's director of product management, has also been developing the infrastructure of the new service.

This development is a part of Musk's plan to turn Twitter into an "everything app." Back in November, the business mogul floated the idea of Twitter becoming a place to shop for goods, transfer money to other Twitter users, and withdraw balances to an authenticated bank account.

In a previous pitch deck to investors when Musk was looking into acquiring Twitter, the business mogul said that he aimed for Twitter to amass about $1.3 billion in payments revenues by 2028.

In line with the license applications, Twitter is also moving ahead with regulatory checks and has applied as well for the necessary state licenses.

According to people familiar with the matter, Twitter's planned payment platform will initially work with regular payment methods and currencies. However, the company plans to support cryptocurrencies in the future.

Source: Financial Times