Elon Musk's plan to add payment services to his social media platform X is much higher than the Trump administration's push to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
The tech billionaire has long expressed his hopes to turn X into “all apps” that act as a payment platform. This brought the vision that X took a step closer to reality last month after trading with Visa to launch a digital wallet.
As Musk approached his goal of making X a payment platform, he also became the main force behind the Trump administration's cost-cutting efforts that effectively thwarted the CFPB. With zero musk in agents overseeing digital payment platforms, questions are swirling about how rolling back CFPB's surveillance capabilities can make a personal profit.
“It's important to raise the question of why the new administration is chasing smaller institutions smaller than some high schools that are doing very important consumer protection work,” said a former CFPB official.
“For a while, writing has been on the wall in terms of Mask's hostility towards the CFPB. Some people want to turn X into every app, a Payments app. [and] The CFPB is the leading payments regulator at the federal level. ”
In a statement to the hill, White House spokesman Caroline Leavitt said, “President Trump is the CEO of the administrative division and reserves the right to fire anyone he wants. Regarding concerns about conflicts of interest between Doge, President Trump said he would not allow the conflict, and Elon himself has promised to reject himself from the potential conflict. Doge is extremely concerned about what they are doing. It is transparent and posts daily updates of X and updates its website.”
Under Biden-era director Rohit Chopra, CFPB will offer a non-bank offering digital payment apps under supervision in November, with a bigger-sized approach to overseeing companies like Apple, Google, PayPal, and Venmo. The rules that were empowered were finalized.
In early January, we also opened a comment on the proposal for rules regarding the implementation of the E-Fund Transfer Act, which aims to protect consumers from errors and fraud from digital payment mechanisms. The rules sought to apply the law to cryptocurrency and stupid things.
President Trump took office and fired Chopra and began an overhaul of the CFPB in Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rooms. Musk's Doge officials instructed the agency to freeze all work and fired about 100 of the 1,700 labor force.
Trump also moved to undermine consumer watchdogs during his first term, but his allies this time look to bystanders at an institution that has long been a source of frustration among conservatives Going further to.
A federal judge banned the firing of CFPB staff earlier this month, who had bulked up or deleted agency data amid concerns about such measures. However, government lawyers refused in court Monday that the administration was trying to remove the agency.
“It's dramatically more extreme than last time with Trump. It's a bit difficult to exaggerate how different this is. Last time there was a job freeze and everyone agreed that they had a different attitude towards enforcement. I think they'll do that, but this is 10 million times more dramatic than that,” a CFPB employee told The Hill.
Musk came up with the idea of building “all apps” over the years, even before he acquired X, known as Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. Social media platforms are now turning their eyes to X conversion. An app with features ranging from messaging to video chat and payment.
X Money, the payments division of the platform, has come closer to reality in recent months. X has obtained remittance licenses in 41 states, signed a visa agreement in January, launching a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment service.
The ambitions of mask payment apps come from financial technology becoming an increasingly popular space, especially among high-tech giants.
Sources familiar with the current CFPB team's work suggest that suspension regulations could potentially make masks more successful than their competitors in the financial technology field.
“This tech rush has skyrocketed into consumer finance, and certainly there was a debate from masks about how he wanted to turn X into a payments company. [Meta CEO Mark] Zuckerberg tried to do it on Facebook Libra five or six years ago and backed away from it due to regulations,” the source said.
Facebook, owned by Meta, announced plans to launch a cryptocurrency called Libra in 2019, but ultimately gave up after three years of difficulty moving the project off the ground.
In December, CFPB accused operators of Zelle and the three owner banks, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, “didn't protect consumers from widespread fraud,” saying, “Large banks say they “cannot protect consumers from widespread fraud.” “We ran through the network to compete,” the company claimed to have grown payment apps such as Venmo and CashApp. ”
During the Biden administration, a group of engineers were hired by the CFPB to focus in part on regulating payment systems. They have since been fired by the Trump team, a former CFPB official noted.
“It's a group of people who came to CFPB, many of whom have important technology, payments and other private sector experience, and the agency understands what's going on at the intersection of financial services and technology. I was at CFPB to help them… the whole team was wiped out,” the former official said.
While Trump has consistently defended Musk, he also argued that he would not allow conflicts of interest in his work on federal overhauls.
“I told Elon any conflict you have nothing to do with it. So, whatever has probably anything to do with space, I won't let Elon join it,” Trump said last week. .
Musk may have avoided the emergence of a dispute if he filed a financial disclosure report and sold it from his business, as other special government officials had in the past, and has reportedly been a progressive one. said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy for basic cooperation among think tanks.
The White House said earlier this month that Musk is planning to file a financial disclosure report, but the New York Times said it would not have been made public.
“It was hypothetical that a rich and successful businessman could put his business interests aside for the benefit of the country and try to make some meaningful and positive change. Jack, who served as a special assistant to former President Biden for economic development and industrial strategy, said:
“He's entwined with business interests with the federal government. I think about it in a way that we've never seen in the US,” he added.
Trump's social media company Trump Media & Technology Group could also benefit from less regulations after moving into the payment space.
Trump media submitted his trademark application for Truth.fi a few weeks after the president won the 2024 election. Trump Media officially launched Truth.fi in January, just before he fired Chopra, days after Trump's inauguration.
Watchdog group Accountable.us has obtained that January rules on CFPB's electronic fund transfer law will affect Trump media's truth, allowing both Trump and Musk to dodge scrutiny of payment systems I argued in the report. CFPB takeover.
The X and Trump media did not respond to requests for comment.
The President is Trump Media's biggest shareholder, this is the parent company of true social, and he has historically worked in the real estate sector, marking a shift in which he is involved in the financial services sector through the company. Masu.
Trump's stock in Trump media was estimated at $3.7 billion earlier this month. However, he moved all his shares into revocable trust in December before taking office.
“Together, Trump and Musk don't seem to care about conflicts of interest and seem to be acting blatantly to serve their own private financial interests,” Santa Clara University.
