Elon Musk’s new payments product, X Money, has moved into limited external beta testing this week. Early screenshots shared by actor William Shatner — who famously played Captain Kirk — indicate the app will offer cashback on select card purchases and advertise a 6% annual percentage yield on deposits.
Screenshots also show deposits are held at Cross River Bank, a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, with coverage up to $250,000 per person. The images were circulated by Shatner after he received a $42 transfer from Musk as part of the beta rollout.
X Money is intended to be a core piece of Musk’s “everything app” vision for X, covering payments, private messaging, AI services via Grok, creator tools, identity and more. Musk has described the product as “the place where all money is,” calling it a potential “game changer.” The service moved toward external testing after a closed beta that began at least in May 2025, and Musk said on Feb. 11 that external beta would precede a wider launch for X users globally.
Shatner has helped expand testing by auctioning off some of his invites to raise money for charity. With X’s permission, he auctioned 42 X Money beta invites for $1,000 each; winners received a $25 welcome gift card from X plus $1 initially sent to Shatner by Musk. A second auction offered another 166 invites under similar terms. Eligibility for the beta requires U.S. residency, being 18 or older, and maintaining an active X account in good standing. Beta users are reportedly eligible to receive a metal X Money debit card featuring their username from X’s Visa partner.
Despite Musk’s past promotion of Dogecoin and speculation about crypto features, there is no clear sign that cryptocurrencies are integrated into X Money at this stage. X’s return to payments follows Musk’s earlier involvement with X.com in the late 1990s before it merged into what became PayPal. In recent years, X has obtained money transmitter licenses in more than 40 U.S. states and registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to enable peer-to-peer payments on the platform.
