Elon Musk is moving closer to 'everything app' as X readies trading platform

Elon Musk is reportedly moving closer to realising a decades-long, and China-inspired, ambition - to create an 'everything app' for the West.

Like China’s WeChat, Musk wants to combine social, commerce and finance platforms all within a single app.

It was also, according to Silicon Valley folklore, his original vision for the company that became Paypal and gave Musk his first tech fortune.

Back in 1999, Musk launched the original x.com, with an ambition to disrupt banking, before a merry-go-round of dot-com mergers resulted in a company with a narrower focus on online payment processing. His stake was worth $178 million when eBay bought Paypal in 2002.

Now, evidently, Musk is dusting off his vision from the late nineteen-hundreds with a fintech platform within X.

Embedded in X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter and alongside Grok AI, the Musk-owned app will reportedly provide investment and trading services.

It will be the start of a wider money and payment service, according to X CEO Linda Yaccarino.

“A whole commerce ecosystem and a financial ecosystem is going to emerge on the platform that does not exist today,” Yaccarino said, in comments reported by London's Financial Times.

The Financial Times report claims the X app will also rollout credit and debit cards, and digital wallets supporting payments with digital and real-world currencies and token.

X has tapped blockchain prediction market Polymarket as its official partner and is working with Visa on its peer-to-peer wallet service, dubbed X Money.

It comes as X is tipped to see its first year of ad-revenue growth since Musk’s takeover in 2022, which precipitated an exodus of certain brands from the Twitter platform.

Social media analysis suggests around 96% of pre-acquisition advertisers have since returned to the Musk-owned app.