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Just days after taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has issued an ultimatum to engineers over a new project.

According to a report from The Verge, Musk wants to launch a pay-for-play verification system in which verified users are charged $20 per month. 

The kicker is that engineers have until November 7 to launch the scheme or face being fired. Employees were only told of the project on October 30. 

The Verge report says that the price of the verification is subject to change. The price will also cover so-far unspecified other features. 

Since Musk first offered to buy Twitter, the world's wealthiest man has made it clear he planned to shake things up at the social media giant. 

Hours before The Verge report emerged, Musk tweeted: 'The whole verification process is being revamped right now.'

Earlier, tech website Platformer's Casey Newton reported that Twitter was leaning towards asking for verified users to pay for the privilege.

DailyMail.com has asked Twitter for comment on this story.

There are close to 400,000 verified users on Twitter. Making them pay could help the platform stay afloat after reports that bots make up five percent of all users and 'heavy tweeters' make up less than 10 percent of the site's monthly users.

Less active users mean less eyeballs for advertisers. During the court battle to acquire Twitter, Musk himself claimed that fewer than 16 million users are able to see the vast majority of ads.

Musk has also refuted a New York Times story accusing the Tesla-founder of planning a series of layoffs before November 1, in order to avoid paying staff their annual stock grants.  

In responding to ProPublica's Eric Umansky tweeting the Times story, Musk simply wrote: 'This is false.' 

Later, Musk took further aim at the newspaper of record in tweeting a screenshot of a headline from NYTimes.com accusing him of posting a link to a fake story surrounding the assault on Paul Pelosi. 

The headline read: 'Elon Musk, in a Tweet, Shares Link From Site Known to Publish Fake News.' 

Musk quipped: 'This is fake - I did *not* tweet out a link to the New York Times.'