Telegram Sellers Can Now Use In-App Crypto Payments

Wallet, a tool built on the TON blockchain, is letting sellers add crypto payments to the bots they use for getting paid in the messaging app.

Sellers using the Telegram chat app can now get paid in digital money like Bitcoin. This is happening as Wallet, a service provider, expands its payment services beyond just chats. Wallet, created on The Open Network (TON) blockchain, already lets people send digital money to each other in chats. Now, it’s allowing sellers to add digital money to the bots they use to get payments, according to an email sent on Thursday. This system lets people pay for things using digital money like Tether (USDT), Bitcoin (BTC), and Toncoin (TON).

“In the past, simple bots were available that could link to digital money payment systems,” the Wallet team shared with CoinDesk. “But now with WalletPay, sellers can easily accept digital money payments within the Telegram app. They can even accept payments directly in chats.”

Even though Telegram started letting people send and receive digital money over a year ago, not many people are using it. Out of more than 700 million Telegram users, only 2 million use Wallet’s services, the company said.

Telegram’s journey with digital money started a few years ago with the creation of the TON blockchain project. But they stopped this in 2020 because of legal problems with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). But members of the TON community, calling themselves The TON Foundation, have kept the project alive and are still working on it.