During a live-streamed discussion with Twitter advertisers that was held on Wednesday and was hosted by Twitter Spaces, Elon Musk described his vision for Twitter’s strategy to join the payments business. The new Twitter owner predicted that users would soon be able to send money to one another on the network, withdraw money to verified bank accounts, and even be provided a high-yield money market account to entice them to deposit money with Twitter.
The latest comments came in response to a report published this morning by The New York Times, which verified that Twitter had submitted registration papers last week to process payments. The study used Twitter’s submission to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the Treasury Department to make the point that a company must register before it may send money, swap money, or paychecks.
He emphasized that to handle video more effectively at first, Twitter will need to make some fundamental modifications to its underlying architecture.
According to recent reports, the business is developing a “Paywalled Video” feature that would let content producers fee for users to access their work. As a result, it appears like Twitter may be entering a market where it will likely attempt to compete more directly with other social media video services, including TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and others. In mockups of this idea, a tweet featuring a video might be unlocked for as low as $1, according to The Washington Post. When paywalled videos were introduced, it was said that artists might have a selection of fixed rates, such as $1, $2, $5, or $10.
The fact that everyone who joined Twitter Blue would have already been validated by the “traditional payment method” is another point Musk said about how the paid verification program on Twitter will aid in its payment strategy. To help prevent fraud, Twitter Blue users must sign up using a credit or debit card and have their purchases processed through the in-app purchase systems of the app stores.
However, Musk seems to be considering creating bank accounts that would offer high-interest rates to draw customers in the long run on Twitter’s platform. This might compete with other payment services like PayPal and Venmo, which encourage users to keep their cash amounts within their respective ecosystems, or Apple’s recently announced Savings Account for cardholders.
However, given the company’s move into subscriptions, which signals a desire to lessen reliance on ad dollars, his ideas about Twitter payments may not have been good conversation starters with advertisers who are already concerned about Twitter’s long-term commitment to their goals. Musk attempted to allay these worries by claiming that Twitter was considering brand safety for advertisers over the long term in addition to its capacity to generate immediate revenue.
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