Elon Musk’s latest product is slowly appearing in gas stations, restaurants, and at ice cream counters.
A small group of early users is already swiping — or at least photographing — their X Money debit cards in the wild. The posts offer the first real glimpse of a product Musk has been teasing for years.
“The @XMoney card looks and feels premium,” one cardholder wrote on X. “Not quite as heavy as my other metal card.”
The early sightings point to a bigger push: X Money, now in beta, is a debit card and digital payments platform built in partnership with Visa. Musk has said the service will offer users a 6% annual percentage yield — far higher than most traditional savings accounts — and posted on March 10 that public access is expected to “launch next month.”
Deposits are held by Cross River Bank and are FDIC insured up to $250,000.
Inside xAI, the debit cards represent a financial product at the center of Musk’s broader plan to transform X into an “everything app” — one that he said will combine social interaction, financial services, and even autonomous ride-hailing into a single smartphone tile.
For now, only a limited pool of users has access. One of the earliest users has been William Shatner, the actor best known for playing Captain James Kirk in “Star Trek.”
He previously told Business Insider that Musk sent him $42 through the X Money app. Shatner said he has since turned that early access into a charitable effort, selling individual dollars to US-based X users for at least $1,000 a pop, and directing proceeds to his charity.
Some of the users who posted their silvery cards at retailers across the US thanked Shatner for their early access.
Questions remain about the fine print on the debit card’s features.
Some X users have criticized the social platform’s customer service — especially after Musk said he had laid off 80% of the company’s staff — and have questioned whether X Money will offer faster support.
“Frankly, until X gets some customer service, I would never put my money in an X account,” one user wrote.
Others have asked how the company will sustain a 6% savings rate going forward. xAI, the company that now owns X, didn’t immediately respond to questions from Business Insider.
The product marks a return to Musk’s roots in financial technology. In 1999, he was part of the team that cofounded X.com, an online payments company that eventually became PayPal.
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