If ever a new product range was an example of a solution to a problem that does not exist, X Money is it.
Elon Musk threatened, I should probably say promised, a banking tool linked to X, way back in 2022, when he paid a ridiculous amount of money to acquire Twitter.
At the time, he said that Twitter would become “an everything app.” That project, it would be fair to say, has not quite gone to plan. X has however finally got around to releasing its first banking tool, dubbed X Money.
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Whether or not it was worth the four-year wait is another matter. At first glance, it is a safe bet that it will not be offering the headline grabbing deposit rate of 6% for very long.
What is X Money?
X Money is a payment platform. Nothing novel there: it offers instant transfers, a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments, running alongside its social media features. The very idea of wanting to log on to X to make a transfer could not be less attractive to this writer, but there you go. As for P2P transfers: Useful, one has to acknowledge but not novel. US users already have Zelle, Venmo, Apple Pay, among others.
One needs to reside in the US to be a X Money launch customer, so sadly there is no scope meantime to decline any invitation to become a user. Moreover, one needs to be a premium or premium+ subscriber. Quite who those folks are that consider it money well spent to subscribe to X, I confess, I do not know. I must be moving in the wrong circles. I have never knowingly encountered anyone that admits to paying for X premium+.
Apparently, X will make the X Money service available to a wider segment of the market at a later, unspecified date.
Let’s assume however, for the sake of argument, that one does reside in the US and sees fit to spend $40 a month on a premium+ subscription. That will at launch, give users a deposit rate of 6%.
Two things there. Musk will buy market share for a limited period. How long will that 6% rate last? Not long, one suspects. For X users paying the standard subscription rate of $8 a month, users will need to deposit an unspecified amount to qualify for the 6% rate.
A minimum balance of $1,600 to break even
That sounds like X wants folks to have their pay cheque deposited into X Money. Would you want to deposit your pay cheque into X? And do you want to retain a minimum balance of $1,600 to recover the cost of the basic X subscription?
One other point springs to mind. If one happens to like a tweet of which X disapproves, resulting in X suspending the account? Will that also mean access to the X Money app and one’s funds are frozen? Perhaps the UK regulators will dissuade X from thinking about a UK launch.
In the US, X has partnered with Cross River Bank. One wonders how many UK banks will be queueing up to agree a similar deal with X, should X Money eye up a UK launch?
