Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to reports, sources revealed that Twitter (Twitter) has begun to apply for regulatory permission across the United States and design payment software suitable for the entire Twitter platform. At present, Elon Musk (Elon Musk) is exploring new sources of revenue for Twitter to reverse the negative trend of business development.

Esther Crawford, who is emerging rapidly as Mr Musk's deputy within Twitter, has led a small team to map out the architecture needed to provide payment services, according to two people familiar with Twitter's plans.

The launch of a payment service is a key part of Mr Musk's plan to expand new revenue streams for Twitter. Since he bought Twitter for $44 billion last October, Twitter's $5 billion-a-year advertising business has been in trouble. Advertisers and people in the marketing industry have expressed concern about the management and content review of the Twitter platform.

Mr Musk has said he wants Twitter to provide financial technology services, such as P2P transactions, savings accounts and debit cards, to make Twitter a "super app" that integrates instant messaging, payment and ecommerce. Musk co-founded one of the earliest online banks, X.com, in 1999, which later became part of the payments giant PayPal.

Crawford's team is working on this, including designing a secure database to store and protect user data collected by the system, two sources said.

Twitter is also pushing ahead with regulatory reviews needed to provide payment services. Last November, Twitter registered with the US Treasury as a payment processing service provider, according to a regulatory filing. Twitter is now applying for relevant licenses in some states in the United States, according to sources.

The rest of the regulatory applications will be submitted soon, and Twitter hopes to get the licenses needed in the US within a year, a person familiar with the matter said. The company will then continue to expand and seek regulatory permission internationally.

Before Musk's acquisition, Twitter had already set up a subsidiary Twitter Payments in August last year. Musk recently appointed Crawford, the head of Twitter product management, as chief executive of Twitter Payments.

However, if Musk's goals are to be achieved, Twitter needs to meet new technical challenges, undertake complex compliance tasks, and win the trust of individual users.

This work is likely to cost a lot of money. At the end of last year, Musk approached Twitter investors to try to raise more money, according to one investor. He said at the time that some of the money would be used to boost mass recruitment to develop a "super app" that could handle payments.

Before it was acquired by Musk, Twitter was also exploring payment functions around individual products such as rewards and platform commerce.

Musk's goal is much more than that, according to people familiar with the matter. It also involves getting users to reward creators, helping users buy goods directly from the platform, and making payments between users. In addition, according to sources, Musk has said that he hopes to launch the French currency payment system first, and then gradually support the cryptocurrency.

In May last year, Musk provided investors with a document during his acquisition of Twitter, showing that he aims to generate about $1.3 billion in revenue from Twitter's payment service by 2028.

Hundreds of thousands of Twitter users share links to third-party payments on tweets or accounts, according to payment market data group FXC Intelligence. "Twitter is already a platform with a lot of payment activity, so it's not a surprise to make this decision," said Lucy Ingham, the company's head of content.

But other payment experts question whether Twitter's payment service is large enough to be competitive in the industry, especially in the United States. Similar services in the United States include Venmo, Cash App and Zelle.

Twitter will also face strict regulatory scrutiny. Before entering the payment industry, Musk had laid off more than half of Twitter's employees, sparking concerns about his lack of compliance staff. If a company's services involve money transfer, foreign exchange and cheque withdrawal, they will be required to report abnormal activities to the regulatory authorities.

In order to monitor fraudulent and suspicious transactions, users' accounts must be verified by their real names, said Lisa Ellis, a payment expert and senior analyst at market research firm MoffettNathanson. Such regulation means that "many technology companies will choose to give up after trying". They find that taking on long-term investment and risk is a burden: if something goes wrong, they can be fined and a compliance infrastructure must be established that can continue to obtain regulatory permission. "

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.