X Chat’s standalone app isn’t the only new service X is testing this week. The company has also started offering some users an invitation to the X Money payment service. The service was being tested internally among X employees. However, these invitations were not distributed in the usual way. Instead, X owner Elon Musk teamed up with William Shatner (yes, the actor) to invite people into the beta in exchange for a $1,000 donation to Shatner’s charity, which supports children and veterans’ organizations.
In X, the “Star Trek” actor shared information about the X Money service and its beta invitations, which were made available through an online auction on Monday. Musk reshared one of Shatner’s posts to his feed, simply saying, “X Money.” Musk also reposted another user’s post about X Money, adding, “This is going to be a big thing.”
Shatner said the auction was conducted with Musk’s blessing after Shatner received payment from him through the X Money app. (Screenshots show that Musk sent him $42, a playful sci-fi reference; the number, in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is a calculated answer to the meaning of life.)
X also offered 42 invitations to the X Money beta to those who donated in the auction.
After receiving the notification, auction winners will be able to see a link to the X Money service displayed directly below the link to Premium in the app. They will also be the first to receive a metal X Money debit card with their username from X partner Visa, helping to strengthen the person-to-person payments aspect of the service.
The addition of X Money to X is part of Musk’s plan to make the social network more of an “everything app,” offering a variety of features including private messaging, payments, creator content, subscriptions, video, and more.
A screenshot posted by Shatner to X showed the X Money interface with three tabs: “Account,” “Rewards,” and “Activity,” as well as buttons for making deposits, transfers, and requests. As shown in the screenshot, users also have the option to set up a direct deposit to earn APY. (One screen offered the option to earn up to 6.00% APY.)
User deposits are held by Cross River Bank, member FDIC, and are insured up to $250,000 per individual, according to a screenshot posted by Shatner.
Although X Money itself is not an FDIC-insured bank, it has racked up money transfer licenses across the United States. X is currently licensed in more than 40 U.S. states, and at X’s public all-hands meeting in February, Musk told staff that the service would launch into a limited external beta within a month or two before rolling out to users worldwide.
With X Chat, the company is not only launching new links within X, but also testing giving the messaging service its own standalone app. Potentially, X Money could also have its own app to better compete with other apps in this space such as Venmo, PayPal, and Cash App.
Musk’s interest in payments spans decades, since he founded an online financial services startup called X.com in 1999 that was absorbed into the company that later became PayPal. Less than a year after Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, he changed the company’s name to X in honor of his early career.
