Seven American states, including Maryland, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, have granted licenses to Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to send money or currencies.
The Elon Musk-owned social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, has just been granted payment licenses by a number of American jurisdictions, including a currency transmitter license in Rhode Island earlier this week.
Although Musk has hinted at supporting cryptocurrencies on the site, he even momentarily replaced Twitter’s bird emblem with Dogecoin’s dog before it rebranded as X last month. The licenses enable the availability of broader payment services.
The money transmitter licenses obtained since June from Arizona, Maryland, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, and New Hampshire indicate the tech billionaire may have plans to support nationwide payment processing similar to Venmo or PayPal, a company he co-founded. Musk has stated that he plans for X to expand beyond social media posts and become an “everything app.” While required for approving payments, the Rhode Island license is also necessary for providing crypto services.
Just days before making the shocking bid to purchase Twitter for $43 billion back in April 2022, Musk texted, “I think a new social media company is needed that is based on a blockchain and includes payments.”
According to the Department of Business Regulation (DBR) of Rhode Island, businesses needing approval “include those transmitting money for their customers, including traditional wire transfers (like Western Union) and electronic transfers (like PayPal).”
The state’s currency transmission license is also necessary for operating a cryptocurrency exchange and custody service, but fintechs are exempt in “very rare cases” where the company “is registered as a true ‘agent’ of the Rhode Island licensed currency transmitter. Money transmission is not the core profit-making business of fintech.”
The state permits are not exclusive or restricted to that business, even if they undoubtedly pave the way for the provision of crypto payments. The act of selling or issuing payment instruments or stored value, as well as receiving cash or money for the purpose of transmitting it to another location, are all considered forms of money transmission in the state of New Hampshire. Additionally, the state declares that “under federal regulations, an administrator or exchanger who accepts and transmits a convertible virtual currency or buys or sells convertible virtual currency for any reason is a money transmitter.”
