X drops Stripe for US creator payouts

US creators earning through X must now receive their payouts through X Money, the platform's own payments service, replacing Stripe.

The change covers X's Original Content Rewards programme and creator subscriptions. Creators outside the US will continue to be paid through Stripe.

"Starting today, U.S. payouts for Original Content Rewards and Subscriptions will be paid through @XMoney. You'll have access to your payouts the moment they're sent," X said on September 2.

Payments are now instant, with no minimum threshold. Previously they were processed every two weeks and creators had to reach $30 before they could be paid.

To receive payouts, creators must be X Premium subscribers with a verified phone number. X Money currently advertises interest rates of up to 6% APY, with creator payouts counting as qualifying deposits.

“Your reach lives on X, your revenue is set by X, and now the account holding your earnings is operated by X. That’s three dependencies where there used to be two,” Tobias Hoss, a creator economy adviser and former chief business officer at Lunar X, told The Daily Influence.

Hoss said instant payouts and the removal of the $30 threshold are a genuine improvement, particularly for smaller creators, but questioned the decision to make X Money the only option.

“Speed is a feature X can change tomorrow. Optionality is what protects you when it does. The moment there’s only one exit, the terms of that exit stop being negotiable,” he said.

The change comes as X retires its Creator Revenue Sharing Programme, which stopped taking new members last month, moving creators onto Original Content Rewards instead.