A major plank of Elon Musk’s plan for expanding X into an “everything app” has been grafting a payments network onto its main social networking service. Those plans include a Venmo-like payments feature that will let users store money on their X accounts, pay other users or businesses, and even buy goods and services in physical stores.
Upstart payments providers also have the challenge of making deals with businesses to attract customers, when the best way to convince prospective partners that such deals are worthwhile is to have a lot of customers already. “There is a big chicken and egg problem here,” Rawat says.