[TobyTheDog123]

Am I missing something critical here?

Why would people want to send payments over Twitter (I understand it's X, but I'm using Twitter to emphasize that the product is still, exclusively, a microblogging platform with some audio features).

Is it to donate to personalities? I can see that use-case, but whenever I see these kinds of headlines it seems the vision to create an "everything app" means that "peer-to-peer" payments means adding something like Venmo or Cashapp. Do people add their IRL friends on Twitter? If so, why would they use Twitter for that sort of thing as opposed to Venmo or Cashapp?

I'm genuinely curious, but to me it seems like it's a play to get hordes of cash flowing into the platform so that X can rake in interest on it for use in their own debt payments.

[Nathanba]

because I don't have Venmo or Cashapp but I have twitter

[toomuchtodo]

Do you have a bank account? FedNow (US instant payments) just crossed the 400 financial institution mark, a little less than 5% of total US banks and credit unions (~9k), and it’s only been live for ~7 months.

https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow

https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/organi...

[mminer237]

Do you often pay people who don't have Twitter or Google Pay or Zelle or anything either but do use Twitter? I would think signing up for Venmo would be about as easy as adding a payment method to Twitter and a thousand times more useful.

[Nathanba]

I've literally never heard of anyone using google pay, zelle or venmo or cashapp. My prediction is that whatsapp will add payment functionality too if they dont already have it

[ImprovedSilence]

>> I've literally never heard of anyone using google pay, zelle or venmo or cashapp

But you use Twitter..? That's some crazy bubble. venmo isn't even a tech savvy thing, everyone everywhere I know that moves money between individuals or super-small business transactions (think cleaning service, girl scout cookies, club dues) uses it...

[redserk]

I’m in the US, Venmo is almost as (if not, more) ubiquitous as cash between people in my area.

[qingcharles]

In my area (South Side Chicago) I would say a majority of payments are made through Cash App. Either you're paying someone person-to-person (e.g. drug dealer on the subway) or you're using your Cash App debit card to buy something from a store. Literally every person I know in this area uses Cash App as their primary bank.

I'm banned from Cash App so I use PayPal as my primary bank.

[phanimahesh]

Whatsapp does support UPI in India. To be honest it's a no brainer here imo.

UPI makes sending and receiving money as easy and instant as sending a text, that I can not believe how the rest of world lives without it. Free account to account transfers (upto ~1200USD/day) that work from any bank to any bank, in seconds. Even accessible without internet via ussd short codes.

[viraptor]

Venmo and other platforms like that are more popular in the US. I've got the possibility to instantly transfer money to anyone in the country from my bank. There's no reason for anyone here to use a third party app to do it. Venmo is a solution to a problem which doesn't exist in a lot of places around the world.

[nateglims]

Zelle is supposed to be that in the US. My bank uses Zelle for free transfers. It's not marketed well or feature complete at every bank though.

[firejake308]

I honestly think people like you are the target audience, but I don't feel like it's a huge population. And even for people like you, plugging your bank info into Twitter is only one step less than downloading Venmo and plugging your bank info into Venmo, so I don't think they're offering a whole lot of additional convenience

[refulgentis]

It's what it says on the tin, guy with too much money and like all of us, secretly wants to build The platform, is trying to build The platform.

[TobyTheDog123]

But usually, when we want to build The Platform, it at least has some unique utility or offering that would solve a real problem.

But I guess that's just not the case here.

[tqi]

It's kinda hard to believe anyone would look at our hyper-polarized political climate and still want to build let alone operate The Platform...

[refulgentis]

He seems to generally enjoy it and find meaning in it. shrug

[dylan604]

> secretly wants to build The platform

Since when was it a secret?

[mc32]

They better improve their account security to prevent account take-overs, else pissed off users.

Don't mess around when dealing with people's money.

[sidibe]

They want to make sure their money only traverses non-woke wires.

[majikaja]

Prostitution

[throwup238]

Elon Musk has had ambitions to do this since X.com and the Paypal merger. He wants to make an app like WeChat that does everything for everyone.