X Money, Musk's payments service, adds $1 tips after its US rollout

Elon Musk's X is pushing its payments service, X Money, deeper into the social app. On 25 October Musk said users will be able to send another person $1 by long-pressing the Like button on a post, a tipping feature built on the service X began rolling out in the United States in July.

For anyone in European fintech, X Money is worth watching for one reason: distribution. Few payment start-ups begin with hundreds of millions of people already opening their app every day.

What X Money offers

X Money moved out of an invite-only beta on 27 July, when X began opening it to Premium and Premium+ subscribers in the US. It combines a deposit account, person-to-person payments and a Visa debit card inside the X app. Users can send, receive or request money from other X users, and X says these transfers carry no fees.

The service pays interest of up to 6% a year to Premium+ subscribers, and Premium subscribers can reach the same rate by meeting direct-deposit conditions. Eligible card purchases earn 3% cash back. A virtual card is issued at once and works with Apple Pay; customers can also order a metal card.

X Money is not a bank. Deposits are held at Cross River Bank, a US lender insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and X's payments company has said plainly that it is not an insured bank itself. Reports at launch also noted that the headline interest rate is promotional and can change.

Creators pushed onto the platform

X has been using its creator programmes to bring people on board. Since 2 September, US creators in its Original Content Rewards and subscriptions programmes have been paid only through X Money, replacing the previous payout route through Stripe. X told reporters the switch is compulsory for US creators, while those outside the US stay on Stripe for now.

The change brought a real benefit: payouts arrive instantly, instead of every two weeks with a $30 minimum as before. It also brought complaints from creators who would have preferred to keep their old arrangement. Around the same time, X said it was looking into a wave of unexpected password-reset requests hitting user accounts, which raised fresh questions about account security now that money sits behind those logins.

The $1 tip

The new tipping gesture is the clearest sign of where X wants to go. Musk announced it in a post on X, and the idea is that a long press on Like would send $1 to the author of a post through X Money. X has not given a date, eligibility rules or a wider rollout plan for the feature.

It fits Musk's long-standing aim of turning X into an "everything app" that mixes messaging, media and money, similar to WeChat in China. Turning a like into a payment would put a price on attention in a way no large Western social network has done at scale.

What it means for Europe

X Money is US-only, and X has not announced a launch date for any other country. Bringing it to Europe would mean meeting EU rules for payment and e-money services, plus the requirements that come with holding customer deposits through a partner.

Still, the model is relevant to European founders. Neobanks and payment apps in Europe have spent heavily to win customers one by one. X starts with the audience and adds the wallet afterwards. The hard part, as several analysts noted at launch, is trust: persuading people to keep their salary in an app best known for arguments and account suspensions.

What happens next depends on whether X can keep users once the promotional rate falls, and whether the $1 tip turns into a habit or a novelty.