Elon Musk reveals plans to integrate crypto payments into Twitter

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has agreed to purchase Twitter for about $44 billion, spoke on June 16 at an all-hands meeting for the social network company. The billionaire said it “makes sense” to integrate digital payments into Twitter, according to a leaked Q&A session with employees.

Billionaire Elon Musk shared further details of his plans for how crypto could be used on Twitter in a leaked Q&A session with employees of the social media company.

According to a transcript of the meeting released by Vox, the billionaire Tesla CEO expounded on how payments, including crypto, are a “critical area” for Twitter and highlighted the ongoing issue of crypto scams on the social media platform.

“Money is fundamentally digital at this point,” Musk said. adding that “it would make sense to integrate payments into Twitter so that it’s easy to send money back and forth,” noting that this would include, “currency as well as crypto.”

Stating that his goal is “to maximize the usefulness of the service,” Musk said that “if one can use it to make convenient payments, that’s an increase in usefulness.” He added that news, entertainment, and payments are “three critical areas” for Twitter in order to make the service “so compelling that you can’t live without it and that everyone wants to use it.”

Musk suggested that Twitter will integrate payments mirroring his earlier argument that the platform should become a WeChat-style “super app” – the Chinese social media platform brings together multiple services, including ride-hailing, food delivery, and payments under one umbrella.

One solution Musk put forward to address the problem of bots and fake accounts on Twitter was verification through payment for its Twitter Blue subscription service by “piggybacking on the payment system,” he suggested, “Twitter would know who you are, at least from a payment standpoint.”

Earlier this month, Twitter reportedly gave Musk access to a “firehose” of data, including every tweet posted on the platform, in order to enable him to independently verify levels of bot activity.