X Money Goes Live for US Subscribers, Years Behind Schedule

X Money is officially open for business in the US, starting today, giving X Premium and Premium Plus subscribers access to a digital wallet, peer-to-peer payments, and a metal Visa card that can be personalized with a user's X handle, according to 9to5Mac.

The rollout marks the end of an invite-only beta period and represents the most concrete step yet toward Elon Musk's goal of turning X into an "everything app" where social media, messaging, and money all live in one place. For now, access is tied to a subscription: only Premium and Premium Plus members can use it, meaning free X users are locked out at launch.

The feature set reads like a mashup of familiar fintech products. Users get peer-to-peer transfers similar to Venmo or Cash App, free money transfers on X itself, and support for Apple Wallet. The metal card is the flashiest piece, letting subscribers stamp their username on a physical piece of plastic (well, metal) they can pull out at checkout.

Then there's the interest rate, which comes with a catch typical of tiered subscription products. X Money advertises up to 6 percent APY, but that top rate is reserved for Premium Plus subscribers, the priciest tier of X's subscription ladder. Standard Premium subscribers can also reach that 6 percent, but only after depositing a specific amount of money to unlock what X calls a "boosted" rate. In other words, the headline number isn't what most users will actually earn unless they pay more or deposit more.

A Long Time Coming

This launch has been a long time coming, even by Musk's own timeline. Back in 2023, during a staff meeting after his acquisition of Twitter, Musk laid out the ambition plainly: "If it involves money, it'll be on our platform." That comment set expectations that X would eventually function less like a social network and more like a financial hub, similar to how apps like WeChat operate in China.

Since then, progress has been slower and quieter than the initial hype suggested. Musk said in previous statements that "early public access" for X Money would begin in April, but that timeline slipped, and the product instead stayed confined to a limited beta for select users until now.

Regulatory Scrutiny Along the Way

The path to launch hasn't been free of pushback. Earlier this year, Senator Elizabeth Warren flagged safety concerns about X Money, warning that it could pose risks to consumers, national security, and the broader stability of the financial system. Building a payments platform means navigating a much different regulatory environment than running a social feed, one that involves banking partnerships, fraud protections, and compliance obligations that don't map neatly onto X's existing infrastructure.

Those concerns haven't stopped the launch, but they underscore what's at stake as X moves from posting and messaging into handling people's actual money. A payments outage or security lapse carries very different consequences than a bug in the timeline algorithm.

Why It Matters

For Musk, X Money is a key test of whether X can meaningfully diversify beyond advertising and subscriptions, the two revenue levers it has leaned on since the platform's rocky transition away from Twitter. Payments products tend to be sticky: once users link their bank accounts, cards, and balances to a platform, they have more reason to stay and more reasons to use it daily rather than just scrolling.

Tying the launch to Premium and Premium Plus subscriptions also gives Musk a built-in incentive for people to pay for X's subscription tiers, something the company has pushed hard on since acquiring the platform. Whether users are willing to trust Musk's company with their money, given the regulatory questions and X's turbulent recent history, is the bigger open question the rollout doesn't answer yet.

What happens next will likely hinge on execution: whether the wallet functions reliably, whether the interest rate tiers feel worth chasing, and whether the promised expansion beyond just US Premium subscribers actually materializes on schedule this time.