X Announces Peer-to-Peer Payment Service Will Launch in 2024

To rephrase: if it's difficult to barrow money, then a large company (that has money from other ventures) can use that money to create a business that is less efficient than a focused competitor.. but will survive because the focused competitor will have to expend a lot of energy attempting to get adequate capital.

The US used to have conglomerates.. and they died as the capital market developed. But they still exist in other countries, like India with Tata and Reliance.

Super apps solve a similar problem, and Elon is right that payments are the central service of the app. If you look at countries where super apps became popular, payments were the problem being solved. Consumers in those countries have difficult access to credit, credit cards are non-existent, and paying your electric bill may mean going to a physical payment location and waiting in line to pay in cash.

It's a two sided problem: most consumers don't have credit cards (or electronic payment options), and since consumers don't pay with credit cards, businesses often dont accept credit cards. Even the payment networks are underdeveloped and often unreliable (to what extent they exist), and things a company may rely on to extend credit often don't exist: like credit scores or credit reports.

So super apps solve the payment problem on both sides of the market: consumers get access to credit (or the ability to deposit cash at least); and they signup businesses so consumers have a place to spend their money. Consumers like it because it's much easier/faster/efficient, and businesses like it because it increases sales/customers.

The US has the most sophisticated financial market in the world. This isn't a problem the average american has... and that's why even though its been over a decade since WeChat, there isn't a super app in the US. Even the super apps in Europe have poor traction compared to those in India and other markets. The popularity of the concept is directly related to the stage of development of the country's financial markets.

Given the amount of spam/scams already on the platform and the lack of moderation, it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. But they'll either create a proper risk team or they'll keep getting hit with fines and lawsuits that continue to bleed them.

You meant $44 billion, Forbes.

Good for the operators and government, not good for society and humanity.

Is that really a big market? What is the typical use case? Personally, I can't even remember when I privately paid something to a person last time.

Paying for professional products and services is still a pain though. Because usually I don't want to give away private data just to pay for a coffee. And merchants dislike central services because of fees and uncertainty. But that can't be solved by a centralized service. I expect Crypto to solve that at some point. But Bitcoin seems to still have a long way to go before it can do that. The Lightning Network is a step in the right direction, but onboarding is still too slow because it takes an onchain transaction. So there still needs to be a technological advancement before crypto can handle small payments.

Looks like we will have to live with a lacking payments system for the foreseeable future.

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.

I wonder if it's a marketing gimmick to make people think it's more libertarian/secure/private than it actually is.

- consolidation of data, which are vulnerable to hackers

- consolidation of power, which leads to abuse

- monopoly position, which leads to enshittification

- easy target for government surveillance (it is not your data, it is our data)

- limits innovation

- limits competitiveness

- limits ability of users to express freely. For example: if you are not nice you will be banned not only from social media, but from banking, etc.

- arbitrary decisions of tech billionaires will have huge impact on the user base

The monopolistic nature of a super app can ultimately undermine the principles of user empowerment, variety, and security that are essential for a healthy and user-friendly digital ecosystem.