Elon Musk’s X Money searches for ‘payments platform’ tech lead and Solana is eager to help

Elon Musk’s X Money is recruiting a senior engineer to build a new payments platform for the social media network formerly known as Twitter, signaling the billionaire’s plans to launch a digital wallet may finally be advancing.

And it appears the Solana ecosystem wants to help the tech billionaire find the right person for the job.

“X is hiring a technical lead for X Money,” Solana posted Tuesday on X. “This is your chance to shape how hundreds of millions access financial services.” Notably, Solana advisor Nikita Bier joined X as head of product in June.

While the X Money job posting does not mention cryptocurrencies or blockchain, it does call for an engineering lead to help build a payments platform “from the ground up” — one that would need to be designed to serve X’s more than 600 million monthly users.

In January, it appeared X’s move into the world of digital payments was imminent. Then-CEO Linda Yaccarino grabbed headlines when she announced a partnership with Visa. “Another milestone for the Everything App: Visa is our first partner for the X Money Account, which will debut later this year,” Yaccarino said at the time.

In January, CNBC also reported on the plans, citing an anonymous source that X Money would likely launch during the first quarter. With X posting the job description for the new hire only about a week ago, it appears the social platform’s plans could be as much as several months behind.

X’s partnership with Visa was meant to provide users of the social media network with the ability to fund their digital wallets, transfer funds to bank accounts, and execute peer-to-peer payments. The move was also widely seen as integral to Musk’s big-picture plans of transforming X into a super app akin to WeChat.

Besides periodically showing support for the use of digital assets, Musk also recently suggested that traditional currency will eventually become “irrelevant.”

Is crypto involved?

The new job posting for a “technical lead” based in Silicon Valley does not mention crypto or stablecoins — the popular tokens being widely adopted by many major financial institutions after the passing of U.S. legislation — but the scope of the role suggests X is building its own payments infrastructure rather than relying primarily on third-party providers.

“You’ll apply your expertise in distributed systems, secure transactions, and high-availability architectures to build a robust, scalable payments infrastructure,” the post says. “This is a rare opportunity to build a foundational product at the intersection of fintech and social platforms—enabling users to move money, access payment services tools, and engage in new digital experiences, all on the X platform.”

The description suggests X Money will take on the form of a newly created, custom-built financial services infrastructure, rather than simply enabling existing payments layers or providers. X Money’s listing also rates experience working in a “greenfield product environment” as a bonus. Typically, greenfield refers to building new applications from scratch, or a blank slate.

In April, SkyBridge Capital founder and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci predicted X Money would integrate cryptocurrency.

“I do think that you will see X-XL whatever you want to call that conglomeration, he’s going to build a super app there and I think he’s going to be using crypto,” Scaramucci said. “Will it be his own coin, the way Telegram is doing it? Will it be a stablecoin? It will be something. I don’t know what it will be, but it will be something.”