Elon Musk‘s social platform X has appointed Benji Taylor as its new head of design, a hire that comes as the company readies a broader rollout of its integrated payments product, X Money. Taylor announced the appointment on X on Wednesday, describing himself as honoured to join the company. He said he looks forward to working closely with Musk and X’s head of product, Nikita Bier.
Bier welcomed the appointment publicly, stating he had followed Taylor’s work for years and believed he was on course to become one of the best designers in the world. Bier added that X was finally building what he called the greatest design team in the industry. Taylor’s background is rooted in crypto and consumer software, making him a notable choice for a platform pushing deeper into financial services.
Before joining X, Taylor founded Los Feliz Engineering, a consumer software studio that was acquired by decentralized lending protocol Aave Labs in 2023. Following that acquisition, he served as chief product officer at Aave Labs until October 2025, where he oversaw product strategy and development for its decentralized lending protocol and related applications. He also held the role of senior vice president of product and design at Avara, the renamed Aave Companies group.
Most recently, Taylor led design for Coinbase‘s Ethereum layer-2 network Base, where he was responsible for the network’s product and interface design across both user-facing and developer-facing experiences. His career spans some of the most prominent names in the crypto and decentralized finance space, giving him a distinctive profile among product designers. That background aligns closely with X’s current direction as it builds out financial services within its platform.
X Money is described as an integrated payments and financial services layer for the social platform, designed to introduce peer-to-peer payments, wallet services, and a debit card linked to user accounts. The product is currently in a limited external beta phase and offers users a 6% annual percentage yield on cash balances held in an X Money wallet. It also includes a personalized metal Visa debit card engraved with the user’s X handle and peer-to-peer payment functionality tied directly to the app.
In early March, Musk confirmed that X Money would move to public access next month, marking a significant step in the platform’s financial ambitions. Musk has described X Money as part of a broader plan to transform X into an everything app that combines social networking, messaging, and financial services. The appointment of Taylor, with his deep crypto and product design experience, signals that X is investing heavily in the design and user experience of that financial layer ahead of its wider launch.
Originally reported by CoinTelegraph.
