Elon Musk co-founded X.com, the online financial-services company, in 1999. Musk established X.com in March 1999 with Harris Fricker, Christopher Payne, and Ed Ho. The company aimed to combine online banking with financial services delivered through the internet.
X.com offered services including email-based payments and online financial accounts. This approach was unusual at a time when many customers still relied on branches, checks, and telephone banking. The company’s early work helped create the business that later became closely associated with PayPal.
X.com merged with Confinity in 2000. Confinity had developed PayPal as a service for transferring money electronically. After the merger, the combined company eventually adopted the PayPal name, and eBay acquired PayPal in 2002.
X.com is also the name Musk restored for Twitter in 2023, but the original X.com was a separate financial-services company founded in 1999. The shared name is a frequent source of confusion.