Elon Musk is his generation’s finest innovator: ”Twitter’s quest to become a payment company has taken its first major step with license acquisition. The company announced Wednesday that it has been granted money transmitter licenses by three US states namely: Missouri, Michigan, and New Hampshire.”
Today, Twitter as a fintech is born. As Meta (yes Facebook) is coming with Threads to challenge Twitter, the microblogging platform, Elon Musk has moved on, understanding that the natural stable state of all digital platforms is fintechnolization: “a construct that every digital platform must have a maturity state of offering a fintech solution.“
Last year, I coined the word “fintechnolization” – a construct that every digital platform must have a maturity state of offering a fintech solution. I had watched all great digital platforms on how they ended up providing fintech solutions even when they began in an unrelated sector. It was also on that framework that I started Tekedia Capital since Tekedia itself is a platform. In that piece, I made a call that in 2021, I would start a financial services solution on Tekedia!
Imagine if I can promote Tekedia Mini-MBA on Twitter, and you do not need to click to visit our site, but can pay right there? I cannot wait for that feature to come to LinkedIn also. Simply, why do I need a PayPal or Stripe on our website? It is about removing friction for transactions to take place. It is about reducing the inertia for sales to happen.
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Good People, Twitter is back because Twitter 2.0 as a fintech is starting with 300 million users.
Comment on Feed
Comment 1: I have a question prof.
If social networks can take advantage of their users to add a fintech layer
can fintechs also create social platforms to attract and keep users?
My Response: Allow me to weigh in on this
So I think the premises are different for both case studies.
Social networks are built to foster communication as would be obtainable in reality. To have productive communication we would require some inherent level of “TRUST”.
When we build social networks, we build ” digital trust vehicles”, with this, interactions can continue.
Thereafter, the natural principle of giving performs it’s wonders – givers never lack.
What these digital vehicles earn is a public attestation of trust and credibility.
These firms can then leverage this public vote of confidence (signalled by downloads and average daily usage) to touch opportunities that would typically require brick and mortar setups.
The flip side (based on your question) can signal desperation to the typical user.
Fintechs are profit oriented and best believe, when it’s 8pm and you want to feel human again, you don’t look at your numbers.
A decent option to explore would be to keep fintechs as fintechs and maybe allow for peer to peer transactions like that binance has.
Startups can ride this wave and expand to social networking to change the narrative.
It’s a touch and go game but I think it could be worth the risk.
Comment 2: A smart move. No point wasting effort competing with Thread, which is a totally free platform. I foresee in the future, Thread adopting same fee structure for verification, as Twitter does, unless the revenue streams from advertising through integration with other Meta platforms are more than enough to sustain Thread.
My Response: At the end, they will all settle to one stable state despite all the garagra at the beginning.
Comment 3: Elon Musk is coming back to fintech after he sold PayPal. He knows there is a lot of gaps in fintech, but the market is in Africa, where majority of the countries are literally exclude from global financial ecosystem.
Comment 4: Interesting development.
As new companies unlock the power of fintech, the veterans will redeploy and adapt and I foresee a new wave of dislocation that will birth new model of payment. Twitter joining the league of stripe and Paypal(more like its foster parent) especially as one of the leading competitors to Meta, has many market possibilities to, and reactions from other social platforms. Expect Tiktok, Snap, Instagram, Truthsocial, and others in that category to join the fintech race rather than partner.
Beyond this competition, its the ease of adoption for creators, cross site integration, and industry wide compliance from Asia, America, Europe to Africa that will determine who wins as the market realign and evolve. Imagine Twitter taking it far to join local fintech space with Moniepoint, Opay and the likes?
Unlock seamless banking from just owning a Twitter account. The possibilities ahead combining massive data repositories with finance, and AI leaves the mouth tasty of what is to come. I foresee mergers & acquisition as some players (social media giants and fintechs company) naturally fizzle out in years to come. Africa innovators and investors should give us our own Twitter. We can still join this race!
My Response: The only defense these days is to have a little offline component which cannot be taken out by these large foreign firms.
Three US States Grant Twitter Licenses to Offer Financial Services
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