TNT:
Harambe: The beginnings of the most powerful FinTech company in the world – From Twitter to X Corp
(4/11/23)
The (breaking) news 🗞 Elon Musk just killed Twitter. Twitter Inc. no longer exists 🤯
It’s now X Corp., which is another step towards the Everything App, or what could be the most powerful FinTech company in the world.
Let’s see what it means and why it’s a big deal.
More on this 👉 A filing in the Southern District of Florida shows that Twitter Inc. has been merged with X Corp. and now Twitter as we know it no longer exists.
The new phase of Twitter will be X Corp., which will run on a vision laid out more than 20 years ago.
A step back 🔙 Everything goes back to the days of X.com, an online bank Elon Musk co-founded with Harris Ficker, Christopher Payne, and Ed Ho in 1999. The company later became PayPal PYPL 2.32%↑, which today is one of the biggest and most important payment companies in the world.
Despite the merger, Elon’s sentiment for X always remained, and now might be the best time to make it happen. But on a much bigger scale.
The master plan. That’s why the CEO of Tesla TSLA 0.94%↑ and SpaceX bought Twitter in October 2022 and described his acquisition as “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”.
A month later, Musk said he will execute the X product plan “with some improvements” which will make Twitter “the most valuable financial institution in the world.
The potential With 238 million users, the social media giant could definitely be transformed into an app that does everything.
Not only it could become the first Super App of the West. More importantly, Twitter can become the Super App PayPal, Klarna, and Revolut always dreamed of.
WeChat, the gold standard of Super Apps, today has 1 billion users and brings together social networking, payments, e-commerce, games, news, events, shopping, etc. all in one place.
And it started as a messaging app. Just like Twitter.
THE TAKEAWAY
WTF?! What the FinTech? First, let’s zoom out for a sec. We first must understand that all-in-one platforms aka Super Apps are super convenient for users. Given they control every aspect of digital consumers’ lives, it simply means that a dependency on advertising isn’t required. And this has been a massive challenge for platforms like Twitter or Facebook since 97% of their revenues come from ads.
Yet, while appealing this all comes at a cost. You need heavy investments towards building and growing the platform and only a massive scale could justify your business economics. More importantly, regulators in the US and Europe won’t be keen on a single app achieving too much dominance in the market.
But Twitter has an X Factor, and his name is Elon Musk. And he’s an entrepreneur who’s always serious about building something much much bigger. More importantly, everything depends on the execution – WeChat or AliPay didn’t become Super Apps overnight.
And the groundwork is already being laid out – earlier this year, Twitter reportedly began applying for regulatory licenses in the U.S. while also developing software to add payment functions to its platform.
Whether or not Musk pulls this off, it’s undoubtedly one of the most interesting FinTech developments ever. In fact, it’s much more than that – we’re witnessing the beginnings of the most powerful FinTech company in the world.
