Elon Musk’s X partner with Visa for financial services, ignoring crypto yet again

Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, announced on Jan. 28 that it’s teaming up with Visa to launch a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments service.

The deal makes ‘X Money’ the first product of its kind on the platform. Users will soon be able to send money directly between their bank accounts and their X wallet. It’ll also support instant peer-to-peer payments, almost like Venmo or Zelle—but, of course, with Elon’s spin.

X Money is Elon’s clearest move yet toward building the “everything app” he’s been teasing since his $44 billion takeover of Twitter back in October 2022. Elon said he wanted to turn the app into a hub where people could run their entire financial lives.

Another milestone for the Everything App: @Visa is our first partner for the @XMoney Account, which will debut later this year.

💰Allows for secure + instant funding to your X Wallet via Visa Direct

🪪 Connects to your debit card allowing P2P payments

🏦 Option to instantly…

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) January 28, 2025

But here’s the thing: there’s not a single mention of Bitcoin, Dogecoin, or any kind of crypto in this rollout. And for a guy who’s basically been the crypto whisperer, that’s got some of us really disappointed.

What’s in the X Money playbook?

The X Money Account will let users send and receive payments directly on the platform, according to Linda Yaccarino, X’s CEO. She broke the news in a post today, calling Visa the ideal launch partner for this new feature.

It’s a solid decision on paper. Visa handles more than $14 trillion in transactions every year. By tying into that network, Linda said X is making sure payments flow smoothly and instantly for its users. Creators will be the first to benefit from X Money, as they’ll be able to accept payments for content without relying on external apps like PayPal or Cash App.

Here’s the timeline: the service is expected to launch sometime in the first quarter of the year. But let’s call it like it is: Visa isn’t exactly revolutionary. Sure, it works, but crypto lovers like me are asking why Elon, of all people, is playing it safe. Especially when he’s ‘crypto president’ Donald Trump’s best friend right now.

And we all remember how in 2021, under Jack Dorsey’s leadership, Twitter launched a Bitcoin tipping feature that let users add crypto wallets and send Bitcoin directly to each other. That cemented Twitter as a crypto-friendly platform. Fast-forward to January 2025, and X doesn’t have any of that anywhere.

Crypto’s absence is loud

People expected Elon to come out swinging with Bitcoin or Dogecoin as part of the platform’s payment system ages ago. He’s even hinted at using blockchain for payments on X. Maybe it’s because setting up a crypto-based payment system isn’t easy.

Even X Money’s launch has been a bureaucratic grind—X Payments LLC is licensed in 41 states and registered with FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. If adding crypto on top of that feels like a legal nightmare, Elon might just be trying to avoid the headache.

But then again, this guy told us he wasn’t ever gonna promote crypto seriously in 2023. He explicitly said that he would only get into a crypto “like as a joke,” hence his infamous love for DOGE.

One incident got crypto enthusiasts riled up last month. Elon briefly tweeted about XRP last week before deleting the post. The tweet triggered widespread speculation that XRP might be part of X Money’s future plans.