X Launches New Chat Experience in Beta, a Precursor to Payments

X is moving ahead with its reformation of messaging in the app, with some users now able to access the initial beta of X’s updated “Chat” element.

As you can see in these examples, shared by app researcher Jonah Manzano, X is rebuilding its DM back-end with enhanced privacy in mind, with encryption being a foundational element of the new experience.

In order to set up your new chat profile, you’ll need to create a four-digit code, adding another safety barrier.

The added security points to DMs become the focus of X’s coming in-stream payments push, providing more assurance for users who may be looking to share money in the app.

Presumably, that will make DMs the functional utility for money sharing, while X is also looking to expand beyond payments, by enabling people to load money into their account in the app, so you can also host savings in the same place.

How, exactly, that will work is not entirely clear, but X owner Elon Musk recently reiterated his plans to move in this direction, noting that:

“When people’s saving are involved, extreme care must be taken.”

The focus on using messaging for this purpose also fits with Elon’s broader vision to create a Western version of WeChat, the messaging platform that’s now central to many transactional elements of daily life in China.

Elon’s “everything app” vision is inspired by WeChat, while also incorporating elements of Musk’s initial expansion plans for PayPal, before he was ousted from the company in 2000.

Musk’s been sitting on his integrated payments/banking/shopping platform concept ever since, and reforming DMs looks to be the first stage in that shift.

So will it work?

It’s difficult to say, because while conceptually, a more integrated social/payments app seems to fit, and has been a transformational innovation for Chinese users, various platforms have tried similar approaches in Western markets, and none have caught on, even marginally.

Meta is the most notable example. Meta also cited WeChat as the inspiration for its reformation of Messenger back in 2016, which was also set to incorporate payments via its Facebook Pay, and eventually its Libra in-stream payments functionality. Facebook Pay is the only element still remaining from this effort, with regulatory challenges, and low consumer adoption, eventually derailing Zuck and Co’s plan for a Western WeChat of their own.

And even Facebook Pay has struggled to gain any real traction, though that also relates to broader concerns around Meta’s past data privacy controversies, and industry stonewalling to stop Meta becoming an even bigger player in another key market. 

TikTok has been pushing in-stream sales for years, and is gradually gaining traction, Twitter tried in-app shopping (and it didn’t work), Pinterest is working on more direct payments, Instagram and YouTube would love the same, etc.

Every single one of these platforms would switch on streamlined, one-tap, in-stream payments if they could, and if there was significant consumer demand for such, they may well be able to make it happen. But again, Western users have generally seemed more content to keep their social media and shopping experiences separate, with the security and reliability of known providers, like Amazon, winning out overall.

So while, theoretically, this should be a logical combination, a perfect matching of social and payments, into a singular integrated platform, in practice, that hasn’t worked out.

And it’s hard to imagine that X will be the one to finally crack the code and facilitate broad-scale consumer adoption of such.

Because while X may be able to introduce payments, it hasn’t found even the initial stages of this process easy. X has struggled to gain payment processor licenses in the U.S., with key states refusing its initial applications due to concerns around its ownership.

Late last year, New York rejected X’s initial payment processing request, based on the fact that X has deep ties with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, due to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman being an investor in Musk’s X project. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, according to NY assessors, has a long history of brutality and repression, which it claims “has been fueled and enabled” by the platform itself.

That’s just one of several hurdles that X has faced in gaining initial approval for payments in the app. And this is just payments, not transactions (which is another license in each region), and this is only in the U.S., X seemingly hasn’t even looked to expand to other nations as yet.

Initially, Musk believed that X would have payments active in the app by the end of last year, noting that “it would blow my mind” if that wasn’t the case.

But we’re now midway through 2025, and payments are still not active.

And while they may well be coming, as part of the new messaging re-furbish, X still has a long way to go in winning over necessary regulatory groups, and then consumers, in making the app a central utility.

And the users may well be the most difficult part, because X is losing them over time.

So even if X can get all the necessary approvals (which no other app has been able to), and even if it can integrate simplified payments in-stream (which no other app has succeeded with), it’s audience share may soon be so small that it won’t matter either way.

That’s not to say it can’t happen. Elon is known for turning impossible challenges on their head, and it could be that he has some luck-enabled plan to make X payments a more significant element.

But I don’t see it yet.

Though we are seemingly going to soon find out, with the first stage being the gradual launch of its new X Chat functionality.

X Payments, presumably, will then follow shortly after.