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Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino described payments functionality as a fast-approaching feature Monday, which she said will transform the way millions of users engage with each other on the platform also known as X.
“We are actually redefining what users will come to rely on,” Yaccarino told The Female Quotient at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France. “The scope of our vision, and the pace of the innovation at the company, is like nothing I can describe.”
Yaccarino was appointed CEO of Twitter last year following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company in 2022. Tasked with turning the company around amid tensions with advertisers, Yaccarino has also overseen the social media platform’s expansion into technical areas like AI, audio calls, and video streaming.
The amount of information at users’ fingertips on Twitter has grown dramatically with work done under the platform’s hood, Yaccarino said. For example, she described the company’s race to becoming a video-first platform as night-and-day compared to serving as a “140-character messaging app.”
The ability to oversee sweeping changes at the platform was a main reason Musk hired her a year ago, she said. Early conversations between the two focused on helping accelerate the “everything app,” a vision Musk has for the platform that extends to banking and even dating.
A myriad of technical features allowing users to connect in different ways amid abundant amounts of inflation will dovetail with payments “soon,” Yaccarino said.
“There’s so many new things to experience,” she continued. “Think about that: Once we launch payments—we’ll start in the U.S.—the financial system that will emerge on that platform.”
The company made progress on payments when it obtained three money transmitter licenses last July. And while Musk—a well-known Dogecoin devotee—has signaled that he wants the feature to primarily involve fiat currencies, it’s reportedly being built in a way to support crypto payments in the future.
Dogecoin has pumped in the past when Musk discusses Twitter payments functionality, but his firm has never confirmed plans to integrate the leading meme coin. Musk's electric car company Tesla accepts Dogecoin payments for merchandise, along with Bitcoin payments to purchase vehicles.
Edited by Andrew Hayward