Elon Musk is exploring new ways to increase Twitter’s revenue following his historic takeover — and his next move appears to have one of his previous ventures in the firing line.
Musk has implemented a wide array of tweaks to the social media giant in the months following his $44 billion (A$62b) acquisition.
Despite his paid verification plan being met with widespread scorn, the Tesla billionaire has refused to budge on his vision of turning one of the most visited websites in the world into a one-stop shop for browsers.
Twitter is now attempting to expand its capabilities to include payment processing services, similar to PayPal, Google Pay, and others.
As one of the co-founders of PayPal, Elon has now seemingly turned on the payment service after playing a crucial role in its development and success.
Over the past few months, Twitter has been working towards obtaining the necessary licenses to allow money transfers between its users. This would allow users to send and receive payments through their Twitter profiles.
The ultimate goal of this expansion is to transform Twitter into a comprehensive payment gateway solution, incorporating traditional bank accounts, cryptocurrencies, and other financial services.
According to the Financial Times, Musk‘s aspirations for Twitter extend well beyond its current offerings.
He aims to provide users with the ability to reward creators directly, offering a system for users to purchase items through the platform and pay each other direct. The system is expected to be fiat-based, with the potential for cryptocurrency integration in the future.
A pitch deck presented to investors during the acquisition process in May, obtained by the Financial Times, reveals that Musk‘s goal is to generate $1.3 billion in payments revenue for Twitter by 2028.
However, the concern of data privacy arises as social networks, like Twitter, collect vast amounts of personal information from its users.
It remains uncertain whether Twitter will be granted the necessary licenses and if it will successfully navigate through this new venture. Perhaps Musk is merely testing the waters and gauging the market before making a full-fledged commitment, as he has done with other changes he has proposed in the past.
The news came after Musk revealed he will to allow users to tweet a whopping 4,000 characters – more than 14 times the current limit.
As with most major company announcements since the tech tycoon took over the social network in late October, the change was announced in a tweet on Sunday.
“Easy swipe right/left to move between recommended vs followed tweets rolls out later this week. First part of a much larger UI overhaul. Bookmark button (de facto silent like) on Tweet details rolls out a week later. Long form tweets early Feb,” he wrote.
Musk confirmed last month he would resign from the top job after he started a poll on Twitter asking if he should step down as its head. About 17.5 million people voted and the final result was 57.5 per cent in favour of Musk quitting.
He said he would step down as soon as he could find “someone foolish enough to take the job” and that his future role at the company would be to “run the software and servers teams”.
In another blow last month, Musk lost the title of the world’s richest person to French businessman Bernard Arnault.
He is now on trial in San Francisco federal court on charges of fraud relating to a 2018 tweet in which he falsely claimed to have the funds to take Tesla private.
Tesla was facing difficulties at the time he posted the 2018 tweet, Mr Musk said in the lead-up to his extraordinary claim against Wall Street.
“A bunch of sharks on Wall Street wanted Tesla to die very badly,” he said about short-sellers.
He is expected later in the trial to face questions as to why he insisted he had the backing of a Saudi investor to take his EV-maker private, despite never having occurred, and whether he made a materially misleading statement with the tweet.