And that outlier status comes from the unique way that China’s payment economy developed.Ĭhina’s explosive economic growth over the 2000s saw the country transition from being a mostly unbanked, cash-based economy to a phone-based, app-payment economy without ever having a middle phase of adopting credit cards. But mobile payments in China are an outlier-87 percent of Chinese people used mobile payments in 2021, almost double the next highest nation. The most important function of an aspiring everything app is payments, which unlock enormous value for the app and convenience for the user. WeChat exists in a very specific Chinese context, and attempts to brute force it in a very different context will crash and burn. Nevertheless, none have succeeded in building an everything app. These companies have every advantage-more cash available than Musk, larger pools of technical talent, better public reputation, and more successful lines of business in the app ecosystem. Companies like Meta and Alphabet have made attempts before. Unfortunately for Musk, his vision of creating a Western WeChat is doomed to failure. If it can be done, why not Musk? And why not start with Twitter? And WeChat was initially built on the back of parent company Tencent’s popular social network, QQ. WeChat (along with competitors such as AliPay) has proven that such apps can reach scale and be wildly successful. It’s a tall task, but Musk has been involved in the founding of three separate multibillion-dollar companies. Such an app would be one of the most valuable companies in the world if it succeeded. On the face of it, none of this seems unreasonable. Musk described that firm, which would eventually merge with Confinity to form PayPal, as a “global financial nexus” that could handle bank accounts, mortgages, credit, insurance, stocks-anything and everything financial. He’s also long been obsessed with the letter X-he named his original online bank X.com, founded SpaceX, and even named his son “X Æ A-12.” His X-ray vision, if you’ll forgive the pun, dates back to his founding of the original X.com. Musk has been laser-focused on his vision of the everything app for longer than most realize. It’s an indispensable app in China, and Musk wants to build X into that app in the United States. WeChat is known for doing virtually anything an app can do-messaging, audio/video, meetings, translation, social networking, shopping, payments, ride sharing, food delivery, and more. Musk has been focused on this vision for Twitter since before he even bought it, repeatedly praising the Chinese app WeChat in a June 2022 town hall at Twitter. Last week, Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as “X.” New CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted that X would be “centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking,” a step toward Musk’s vision of creating the “everything app” for the Western world.
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