Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) has taken another step towards becoming an “everything app” by securing a money-transmitter license from Utah. It was the fifteenth state license for the platform in the United States.

X’s Move Towards Payments

According to the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System & Registry, the state of Utah granted the license to X last week on Friday. However, the company did not officially announce its payment ambitions.

Despite the unofficial murmurs, X’s ambitions towards payments were confirmed last year in June when it received the first state money-transmitter license in New Hampshire. Consecutively, the platform obtained such approvals from Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, and several other states.

The money-transmitter licenses now allow the social media platform to facilitate money transfers. A few state licenses obtained by X also enable it to facilitate cryptocurrency payments and provide transfer, custody, and exchange services for digital assets through its platform.

Can X Become an “Everything App”?

Twitter was founded in 2006. Billionaire Musk, one of the heavy users of X (then Twitter), acquired the social media platform in October 2022. Musk, who also controls an electric car and another space technology company, bought the social media company in a unsolicited but negotiated buyout for $44 billion and took the company private.

Under Musk’s leadership, the social media platform soon found itself at the center of a lot of controversy. Following the billionaire's agreement with an account propagating antisemitic conspiracy theories last year, the social media platform suffered from massive ad spending cuts from big brands. Many prominent names, including Apple, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, IBM, Paramount Global, Lionsgate, and the European Commission, even pulled out from the platform.

With these roadblocks, Fidelity, one of the investors in X, recently cut the platform’s valuation by 71.5 percent from the valuation of the original shares. According to the mutual fund giant, X is now only worth $12.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Musk stepped down as the CEO of X last year, handing over the charges to Linda Yaccarino. Musk, still the owner and public face of X, aims to make X an "everything app," similar to WeChat in China, which facilitates from social networking to payments and ride hailing to shopping.