Filings: X is still working on a Venmo-like payments feature, with a 2024 US launch target; X had $1.48B in revenue in first six months of 2023, down ~40% YoY
Context & Ripple Effects
X’s proposed product enters a US peer-to-peer payments market where Venmo had already demonstrated scale through rapidly growing payment volumes, while bank-backed Zelle had also built substantial transaction flow.
The filing pairs the payments push with a sharp decline in X’s reported revenue, making payments a potential new product and monetization line rather than simply a social feature. The effort later reappeared in X’s wallet and peer-to-peer payments announcement with Visa.
First-order effects
- X must turn a filing-level plan into a regulated US payments product, requiring payment-partner, compliance, fraud-control, and user-support capabilities alongside its core platform.
- A successful launch would give X users a native way to send money within the service and give X a possible source of transaction-related revenue as its reported revenue has fallen.
Second-order effects
- Venmo, Zelle, and other established payment services would face another distribution-driven entrant competing for peer-to-peer payment activity, though X would still need to earn user trust in a category shaped by fraud and privacy concerns.
- The product would increase X’s dependence on banking, card-network, and state-regulatory relationships, making execution constraints as consequential as user adoption.
Third-order effects
- The move is part of social platforms’ broader effort to layer financial services onto existing user networks, seeking engagement and revenue beyond advertising or subscriptions.
- Whether that model consolidates around a few large platforms will depend on whether social reach can overcome the compliance, risk-management, and trust requirements that payments impose.
The trend: Consumer platforms are increasingly pursuing embedded payments to diversify revenue and make their services more central to users’ daily transactions.