Elon Musk plans WeChat-like payments system on Twitter that includes crypto

Twitter under Elon Musk is now working on a payments system that will support accepted currencies with crypto functionality embedded into it.

According to a report in The Financial Times, citing sources, the payments feature will support fiat currencies to start with.

Neither Musk nor Twitter confirmed the development.

"Mr Tweet" has apparently instructed developers to build the platform's payments system.

Twitter has been teasing about bringing payments to its platform as Musk wants it to become "an everything app" like China's WeChat.

"Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app," Musk said in October last year, as he took over the company after acquiring it for $44 billion.

"Twitter probably accelerates X by 3 to 5 years, but I could be wrong," he added.

Later, images surfaced about "Twitter Coins" on social media.

Unconfirmed rumours also emerged that Twitter was working on a wallet prototype that would support crypto deposits and withdrawals.

Musk's "Twitter 2.0 The Everything App" will have features like encrypted direct messages (DMs), long-form tweets and payments.

During a podcast, he had said that the US needs a super app.

"It's either convert Twitter to that, or start something new. It does need to happen somehow," he said.

"If you're in China, you kind of live on WeChat. It does everything. It's sort of like Twitter, plus PayPal, plus a whole bunch of things all rolled into one, with a great interface. It's really an excellent app, and we don't have anything like that outside of China," Musk told the listeners during the podcast last year.

In 1999, Musk co-founded an online bank called X.com, which was later merged to form PayPal.

--IANS

na/dpb