Twitter Isn’t a Company Anymore; Can It Be a Super App?

Seamless, embedded payment capabilities are emerging as a critical growth flywheel for tech platforms.

This, as Meta pilots in-app business payment capabilities for WhatsApp users and merchants in Brazil, and Elon Musk ends Twitter’s run as an independent organization by merging the social platform with a newly formed shell company called X Corp.

Musk tweeted about the merger Tuesday (April 11), posting just the single character “X.”

X

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 11, 2023

“X” was the original name of the payments company and online bank Musk started in 1999 that eventually merged with PayPal. Musk still owns the domain name “X.com.”

In a 1999 interview, Musk said, “I think we’re at the … stage now where people are ready to use the internet as their main financial repository.”

A prescient comment.

Industry observers say the move to shelve Twitter under X’s ownership signals a continuance of Musk’s repeatedly stated plans to transform Twitter into a $250 billion super app payments company.

A representative from Twitter, whose inbound media team was part of Musk’s ongoing and substantial headcount reductions at the social media platform, did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment — outside of the now-standard “poop emoji” reply.

Read more: Super Apps for the Super Connected

The World’s Second-Richest Man Dreams of Everything App

An all-in-one ecosystem, such as that provided by a super app, offers a highly attractive, captive commerce environment.

Tech leaders in the West have long admired the market dominance of platforms like WeChat and AliPay, popular across Asia, that enjoy expansive business models, connecting every facet of daily life from ride hailing and eCommerce to mobile payments, photo sharing, video chatting and even government service through in-platform mini apps.

Payments capabilities provide the mission-critical foundational enablement of the services on offer.

One of China’s biggest payments and online finance networks, WeChat, is a FinTech titan and is generally viewed as the gold standard in super apps or everything apps.

Part of the reason the Western hemisphere has primarily relied upon single-use platforms and apps compared to the dominance of comprehensive platforms in the East is that super apps like WeChat make most of their money through mobile payment integrations, and the West lags the East in digital payment and mobile wallet adoption.

But with an increasing number of businesses going digital in the West, that dynamic may be changing.

See more: Are Millennials and Super Apps a Match Made in Connected Heaven?

How Embedded Payments Can Function as a Revenue Stream

PYMNTS research in “The Money Mobility Playbook,” a PYMNTS and Ingo Money collaboration, found that peer-to-peer (P2P) money movement is taking on new significance in a troubled economy where splitting the restaurant bill or lending your friend a few dollars is a big deal.

The same day as Twitter merged with X, Visa announced its new Visa+ P2P product that goes beyond sending money to friends and family to embrace use cases from gig economy pay to earned wage access via other partners to the launch.

Payments services are increasingly important for established platforms, including both Meta’s WhatsApp and X’s Twitter, as they increasingly pitch themselves as innovative ways to interact with not just friends and family but also businesses as part of their next-phase growth evolutions.

PYMNTS has been closely tracking the rise and adoption of the financial super app, a next-generation digital bank that goes above and beyond basic banking app features users have come to expect, as more than half of Generation Z consumers said mobile wallets can replace their physical wallets.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, emphasized in his 2022 annual report to shareholders April 4 that the financial sector’s ongoing digital transformation will continue to eat away at the market share of traditional institutions.

Using Apple as an example, the longtime bank leader underscored that top tech companies are already 100% digital and boast hundreds of millions of customers, as well as enormous resources, in data and proprietary systems, giving them an incumbent competitive advantage in successfully offering future-fit services such as payment processing, credit risk assessment, P2P payment systems, merchant acquiring and buy now, pay later (BNPL) offers to their sizable consumer audiences.

The future will be driven by consumers’ insatiable need for seamless experiences, and it remains to be seen what it will look like.

At least for X, given that the shell corporation was incorporated in Nevada, where Musk operates other enterprises, it is possible that X may become more of an “everything company” versus an “everything app.”