Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is widely known for amassing his fortune through Tesla, his electric car company, and SpaceX, the rocket ship company he founded.
But he started his career trying to disrupt consumer finance as a co-founder of a digital financial services company that later became PayPal. Now, he’s working to transform X.com, his social media platform, into a virtual wallet where people can send money to each other.
These types of digital payment platforms, which other tech companies like Apple and Meta also run, have come under intense scrutiny by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
But that scrutiny is likely to ease, largely because of Mr. Musk, who has been empowered by the Trump administration to reshape federal agencies like the consumer bureau.
In recent days, Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, which is not a formal executive-branch department, descended on the consumer bureau, gaining access to its headquarters and computer systems as part of a broader effort to dismantle it.
Last week, Mr. Musk marked the moment on X, writing “CFPB RIP,” alongside an emoji of a gravestone.
As Mr. Musk’s deregulation team makes its way through multiple federal agencies, he has been criticized for having numerous conflicts of interest involving his businesses.
And at X, one of the most promising ways Mr. Musk can increase profits is through a payments business, which could charge fees for transactions. Building out that business would be easier without having to contend with a regulator like the consumer bureau, which has a recent track record of bringing cases against payment companies.
“Elon Musk is working his way into the financial products marketplace right now,” said Richard Cordray, who was the bureau’s inaugural director under President Barack Obama and remained in the job through the first year of Mr. Trump’s first presidency. “It’s very convenient for him to be trying to neutralize the regulator that he would have to answer to.”
“That is a blatant conflict of interest,” Mr. Cordray continued. “If he were a government employee, it wouldn’t be permitted.”
Mr. Trump has defended Mr. Musk, saying he is “not gaining anything” in his deregulation role. Last week, White House officials said that it was up to Mr. Musk to police his own actions.
In a joint Oval Office appearance with Mr. Trump on Tuesday, Mr. Musk said that all of his team’s actions “are fully public.”
“You can see everything that’s going on and you can see, am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not?” Mr. Musk added. “It’s totally obvious.”
Yet the White House has designated all documents produced or received by Mr. Musk’s team as presidential records, shielding them from public access until at least 2034.
Representatives of X and the consumer bureau did not respond to requests for comment.
Digital payments apps have become a core part of how Americans transact; Apple, Google, PayPal and Block, which owns Cash App, are all big players.
And the consumer bureau has been the primary federal financial regulator for these non-bank technology companies.
Three months ago, it finalized a rule — which took effect last month — giving itself supervisory authority over digital payment companies. That allows the agency’s examiners to delve deeply into the details of those companies’ payment systems and transaction data.
And lately the bureau had been aggressively pursuing enforcement actions against some of the biggest companies in the industry. Last month it accused Block, which owns Cash App, of enabling fraudulent transactions and ordered it to return $120 million to consumers. In December it sued several banks for their operation of Zelle, a payment system that Rohit Chopra, the consumer agency’s Biden-era director, said “became a gold mine for fraudsters, while often leaving victims to fend for themselves.” (The banks denied any wrongdoing and are fighting the lawsuit.)
A trade group that represents Mr. Musk’s X and other financial technology firms sued the consumer bureau last month, challenging its authority to set rules governing the industry. The trade group’s lawyers invoked Mr. Trump, complaining that the consumer bureau had moved forward with the rule before the new administration took office.
On Friday, President Trump installed Russell Vought, newly confirmed as the director of Office of Management and Budget, as the agency’s acting director. Mr. Vought ordered the agency’s staff to halt all work, including supervision and enforcement.
He also ordered them to “cease any pending investigations,” in an all-staff email reviewed by The New York Times.
In January, Mr. Musk announced a partnership with Visa to build a peer-to-peer payment system called the X Money Account. The deal was a major step for X toward becoming what Mr. Musk has called “an everything app.” Under the deal, users will be able to make peer-to-peer payments from debit cards and transfer funds into their bank accounts.
Mr. Musk sees the addition of a payment capability to X as critical to the company’s growth.
In 2022, as he was acquiring Twitter, Mr. Musk projected that within a year, the platform could generate $15 million from payments. (That revenue did not materialize, as X has sought regulatory approvals to handle transactions.) By 2028, that number could soar to roughly $1.3 billion, he claimed in a pitch book circulated to bankers who were financing the deal.
At the time, more than 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue came from ad dollars. Developing a payment feature, the pitch book said, would unshackle the app from advertisers by replacing that revenue with subscriptions and fees from the payment business.
Mr. Musk has hinted of those broader ambitions on X. In November, he posted a screenshot of Joe Rogan’s X account, which included a “$” button, prompting widespread speculation about how soon the social media platform would start offering a payment feature.
Progress had been slow, partly because X would need to secure money transmitter licenses in every state to implement a nationwide system. The company now holds those licenses in more than 30 states.
The Visa deal will allow X to transfer money on Visa’s network rather than obtaining its own licenses.
In a post on X last month announcing the Visa deal, Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, foreshowed grander plans. “First of many big announcements about X Money this year,” she wrote.
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