Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is widely known for the accumulation of his property through Tesla, his electric car company, and SpaceX, the rocket company he founded.
But he began his career trying to disrupt consumer funding as a co -founder of a digital financial services company that later became Paypal. Now, she works to convert x.com, the social media platform, into a virtual wallet where people can send money to each other.
These types of digital payment platforms, which other technology companies such as Apple and Meta are also executed, come under strong examination by the Financial Consumer Protection Office.
But this audit is likely to be facilitated, mainly due to Mr Musk, who has been authorized by Trump’s administration to reshape federal services such as the Consumer Office.
In recent days, the efficiency team of the Department of Government Musk, which is not an official department of executive, descended to the Consumer Office, gaining access to its headquarters and computer systems as part of a wider effort to disassemble it.
Last week, Mr Musk marked the moment in X, writing, “CFPB Rip”, along with an emoji of a burial.
As Mr Musk’s liberation team is making its way through federal organizations, it has been criticized that it has numerous conflicts of interest in its businesses.
And in x, one of the most promising ways in which Mr Musk can increase profits is through a payment business that could charge fees for transactions. Building that the business would be easier without having to deal with a regulator such as the Consumer Office, which has a recent history of bringing cases against payment companies.
“Elon Musk is working on the market for financial products right now,” said Richard Cordray, who was the opening director of the bureau under President Barack Obama and remained at work during the first year of President Trump’s first term. “It is very convenient for him to try to neutralize the regulator he should answer.”
“This is an obvious conflict of interest,” Mr Cordray continued.
Mr Trump defended Mr Musk, saying that he “wins nothing” in the role of liberation. Last week, White House officials said it was Mr Musk to police his own actions.
In an oval office appearance with Mr Trump on Tuesday, Mr Musk said that all the actions of his team “are fully public”.
“Can you see everything that is happening and you can see that I do something that benefits one of my companies or not?” Mr Musk added. “It’s completely obvious.”
However, the White House has set all the documents produced or received by Mr Musk’s team as presidential records, protecting them from public access until at least 2034.
Representatives of X and the Consumer Office did not respond to comments for comments.
Digital payment applications have become a key part of the way Americans deal with. Apple, Google, PayPal and Block, which holds the cash app, are all great players.
And the Consumer Office was the primary federal financial regulator for these non -banking technology companies.
Three months ago, she issued a rule – which came into force last month – giving herself supervisory power over digital payment companies. This allows the Agency’s examiners to deepen the details of the payment systems and the data of these companies’ transactions.
And recently the office had aggressively pursued enforcement actions by some of the largest companies in the industry. Last month, he accused the block to allow fraudulent transactions and ordered to return $ 120 million to consumers. In December, he sued several banks for the operation of Zelle, a payment system that Rohit Chopra, director of the era of consumer agency, said that “it became a goldmine for scammers, and often let the victims take care of themselves”. (Banks denied any offense and fight for the lawsuit.)
A commercial team representing X and other financial technology companies in Mr Musk has sued the Consumer Office last month, questioning his power to set industry rules. The lawyers of the Commercial Group team cited Mr Trump, protesting that the Consumer Office had proceeded with the rule before taking over the new administration.
On Friday, Mr Trump installed Russell Vought, was recently confirmed as the Director of Administration and Budget, as Director of the Organization. Mr Vought ordered the organization’s staff to stop all the work, including supervision and enforcement.
He also ordered them to “stop any pending surveys” in an e -mail of all personal reviews by the New York Times.
In January, Mr Musk announced a partnership with Visa to build a peer payment system called X Money account. The deal was an important step for X towards doing what Mr Musk has called “an application”. According to the agreement, users will be able to make payments from debit cards and transfer funds to their bank accounts.
Mr Musk sees the addition of payment capacity to X as critical for the development of the company.
In 2022, as he acquired Twitter, Mr Musk predicted that within a year, the platform could create $ 15 million from payments. (This revenue was not implemented, as X requested regulatory approvals to handle transactions.) By 2028, that number could go up to about $ 1.3 billion, claimed in a book released to bankers funded the agreement.
At that time, more than 90 percent of Twitter revenue came from advertising dollars. The development of a payment feature, Pitch said, will withdraw the application from advertisers by replacing this revenue with subscriptions and payments from the payment business.
Mr Musk hints at these broader ambitions in X. In November, he posted a screenshot of the X Joe Rogan account, which included a “$” button, causing widespread speculation about how soon the social media platform will begin to start offers a payment feature.
Progress was slow, partly because X would need to secure a money transmitter licenses in every state to create a national system. The company now holds these licenses in more than 30 states.
The Visa Agreement will allow X to transfer money in and out of X money accounts to the Visa network.
In a post on X last month announcing the Visa deal, Linda Yaccarino, X chief executive, caused larger plans. “First of all large announcements for X Money this year,” he wrote.
