X Money, Elon Musk‘s payments platform built into the social network X, has entered limited external beta testing, with early screenshots revealing cashback rewards, a 6% annual percentage yield on deposits, and FDIC-insured accounts backed by Cross River Bank.
The screenshots came from an unlikely source: William Shatner, the Hollywood actor best known for playing Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek series, who is among the first external testers of the product.
What the beta reveals
Shatner’s screenshots show that X Money users will earn cashback on certain card purchases and a 6% APY on deposits. Deposits are held at Cross River Bank, an FDIC member, and insured up to $250,000 per person. Users who enroll will also receive a metal X Money debit card bearing their X username, issued through Visa.
To qualify for the beta, participants must be US residents aged 18 or older with an active X account in good standing.
How Shatner became a beta hub
Musk sent Shatner $42 through X Money to kick off the actor’s participation. Shatner turned the sum into a fundraiser, auctioning 42 beta invites at $1,000 each, with each winner receiving a $25 welcome gift card from X and the original $1 that Musk had routed through Shatner. A second round followed, offering 166 additional invites at the same $1,000 price.
The move effectively crowdsourced beta recruitment while generating charitable proceeds, an unconventional approach to product testing.
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The bigger picture
X Money sits at the center of Musk’s broader ambition to turn X into an everything app spanning payments, messaging, AI services through Grok, creator content, and identity verification. In February, Musk described the platform’s scope directly: “This is intended to be the place where all money is. The central source of all monetary transactions.”
The external beta launch follows a closed testing phase that began at least as far back as May 2025. Musk had stated in February that external beta access would precede a worldwide rollout to X users.
The payments ambition is not new ground for Musk. He founded X.com in the late 1990s, a platform that eventually merged into what became PayPal. Over recent years, X has secured money transmitter licenses in more than 40 US states and registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to enable peer-to-peer payments.
Crypto integration still absent
Despite persistent speculation that Dogecoin (DOGE) could play a role in X’s financial ecosystem given Musk’s well-documented enthusiasm for the memecoin, no cryptocurrency integration has materialized within X Money. The beta’s screenshots show no sign of any crypto functionality, and no announcements on that front have been made.
The 6% APY figure will draw comparisons to high-yield fintech offerings already on the market, and whether that rate holds at scale or applies only to limited deposit amounts remains unclear from the beta details shared so far.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
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