Musk outlines beta timeline for X Money payments launch

Musk laid out the near-term rollout plan during a company all-hands session, saying X Money is “live in closed beta within the company” and that the next milestone is a limited external beta “in the next month or two,” followed by a broader release to all X users. In the same remarks, he described X Money as intended to be “the place where all the money is” and “the central source of all monetary transactions.”

The payments effort is part of X’s broader product expansion and is being built to sit inside the main app rather than as a standalone wallet, according to Musk’s comments. In the same context, he cited X’s scale in terms of installs and monthly users, framing payments as a daily-use layer for the platform.

Operational details about features and geographies for the first external beta were not disclosed in the remarks captured in reporting, but earlier disclosures have pointed to an account-and-wallet structure with card-linked funding and bank transfers. A prior description of the Visa arrangement said Visa would be the first partner for the X Money account, enabling customers to instantly fund an X wallet, connect debit cards for peer-to-peer payments, and instantly transfer funds to a bank account from X Money.

Licensing and regulatory groundwork remains a central prerequisite for a broad U.S. rollout. X’s payments unit has been pursuing money-transmitter approvals state by state. California’s financial regulator lists X Payments LLC as a regulated money transmitter and links to a payments.x.com web domain as the entity’s website, indicating the company has secured at least that state-level registration.

Earlier state approvals have been documented in public licensing databases and described as stepping stones toward a nationwide payments product. In December 2023, X received a money-transmitter license from Pennsylvania, an approval that was described as enabling X to facilitate money transfers and moving it closer to letting users send money to one another. The same report noted that multiple other states had also approved X for money-transmitter licensing and that the company would need approvals broadly across the U.S. to offer payment services nationwide.

The current timeline guidance—internal beta now, external beta in one to two months—resets expectations after earlier public hints that payments would arrive sooner, while keeping the emphasis on staged deployment. Musk’s language also suggests the product is being positioned as more than a creator-payout tool, with the stated aim of consolidating transactions inside X.

The payments rollout also comes as large consumer platforms continue to test how far they can push financial services inside social and messaging environments without forcing users to leave the app. X’s approach, based on the Visa-linked wallet description, centers on connecting existing card and bank rails to an in-app wallet rather than relying on crypto rails as the default funding path. Musk has not confirmed crypto integration in the latest beta-timeline comments.

For now, the clearest signals from Musk’s Feb. 11 update are the product’s status (live internally), the next gating item (a limited external beta within one to two months), and the intended end state (a global rollout to X users). The pace and breadth of that rollout will likely track licensing progress and the readiness of bank-card funding and withdrawal mechanics described under the Visa partnership.