X is testing more than just its new standalone X Chat app this week. The company has also begun offering select users invites to its X Money payments service. This service was previously being tested internally among X employees.
These invites were not distributed in a typical way. Instead, X owner Elon Musk collaborated with actor William Shatner to invite people into the beta in exchange for a $1,000 donation to Shatner’s charity, which supports children’s and veterans’ organizations.
On X, Shatner has been sharing information about the X Money service and its beta invites, which were made available via an online auction. Musk reshared one of Shatner’s posts to his own feed with the comment “X Money.” Musk also reposted another user’s post about X Money, adding, “This will be big.”
Shatner noted that the auction was conducted with Musk’s blessing after Shatner received a payment from Musk via the X Money app. A screenshot showed that Musk sent him $42, a playful sci-fi reference to the meaning of life from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
X offered 42 invites to the X Money beta to those who donated in the auction. After receiving a notification, the auction winners will see a link to the X Money service appear in the app, just below the link to Premium. They will also be among the first to receive the metal X Money debit card with their username from X’s partner, Visa, which is helping power the person-to-person payments.
The addition of X Money to X is part of Musk’s plan to make the social network more of an “everything app,” offering features like private messaging, payments, creator content, subscriptions, and video.
Screenshots posted by Shatner showed the X Money interface with tabs for Account, Rewards, and Activity, along with buttons for making deposits, sending money, and making requests. Users also have the option of setting up direct deposit to earn APY, with one screen showing the potential 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. X Payments itself is not an FDIC-insured bank, but it has been acquiring money transmitter licenses across the U.S. X now has licenses in over 40 states. In a public all-hands meeting in February, Musk told staff the service would enter a limited external beta soon, before going worldwide to all users.
With X Chat, the company is not only launching a new feature within X but is also testing a standalone app for the messaging service. Potentially, X Money could have its own standalone app as well to better compete with services like Venmo, PayPal, and Cash App.
Musk’s interest in payments spans decades. He founded an online financial services startup called X.com in 1999, which later merged into the company that became PayPal. After acquiring Twitter in October 2022, Musk renamed the company X less than a year later, in tribute to those early beginnings.