Telegram Stars for Business: What You Can Sell, What You Net and How Payouts Work

Last month someone in your Telegram channel asked whether they could pay for your course without leaving the app, and you replied with a link to a website checkout. On your website, that is fine. Inside a bot, it is not allowed. Telegram's Bot Developer Terms require every sale of digital goods and services to run on Telegram Stars, and each Star you earn is worth 0.013 USD when you cash it out, after a hold of up to 21 days.

Most pages that rank for "telegram stars" are written for the buyer: how to top up, how to tip a creator, how to check a balance. This one is written for the seller. It covers what a business can sell for Stars, which payment rail each product must use, what you actually receive, how the payout reaches you, and what you owe a buyer who asks for their money back.

Every rule below links to the Telegram page it comes from. These terms change, so check the date on anything you read about them, this page included. We checked every source on 14 October 2026.

Stars are a virtual item that users buy from Telegram and spend inside Telegram. Telegram's Stars terms list what they pay for: digital goods and services from bots and mini apps, paid media in channels, gifts to creators, and messages to people who charge for them. A user cannot withdraw, resell or transfer Stars they bought. A seller can convert Stars they earned into a reward paid out through Fragment, or spend them on Telegram Ads. Money enters through the app stores and leaves only on the seller side. Every rule in the rest of this guide follows from that design.

Buyers have three official routes, according to the Stars terms and the Stars API documentation:

• In-app purchase in Telegram for iOS and Android, billed by Apple or Google.
• @PremiumBot, on Telegram Web, Telegram Desktop and the direct (non-store) Android build.
• Fragment, which Telegram's documentation names as the route that also allows larger purchases.

Users also end up holding Stars they never bought: from gifts they convert, from paid messages other people send them, and from giveaways a channel runs.

For a business, two consequences matter. Your buyer pays with whatever their phone's store accepts, so you never handle a card number, a billing address or a processor chargeback. And you never set what a Star costs the buyer. Telegram does, and the payments page notes that the amount can vary from user to user because of VAT and other fees.

The rule comes from the app stores, not from Telegram's taste. Section 6.2 of the Bot Developer Terms says Telegram follows Apple's and Google's definitions of digital goods and services, that those definitions can change, and that developers should check them directly. Physical goods and services fall under section 6.1 and go through third-party payment providers instead.

Your own website does not exempt the bot. Telegram's payments FAQ answers this directly: a bot or mini app must use Stars for digital sales inside Telegram apps no matter what other web portals or payment providers you run outside Telegram. The same FAQ says no to accepting cryptocurrency instead of Stars for digital goods.

Breaking the rule costs you distribution, not just a warning. The payments page says Telegram cannot show your bot or mini app to mobile users if it sells digital goods in other currencies or through third-party providers. Section 6.2 adds notices to the owning account, removal from store versions of Telegram, and termination from the Bot Platform.

You do not need a developer to earn Stars from a channel. Four features work natively. If you are still deciding between a channel and a group for a paid community, our comparison of groups, channels and supergroups covers the structural differences.

Telegram's August 2024 announcement gives the path: Channel Settings, then Channel Type, then Manage Invite Links, then Create a New Link, and switch on "Require Monthly Fee". The subscriptions documentation states that the only allowed period is 30 days. Each renewal deducts Stars from the subscriber's balance, and Telegram warns subscribers whose balance is too low before the renewal date.

The limit: the maximum monthly price is a Telegram configuration value, not a number published in the terms, so the app shows you the ceiling when you set the price. If you would rather have a bot manage paid access, our roundup of business bots covers InviteMember, which adds paying members and removes them when the membership ends.

A channel admin can post a photo or video that stays hidden until the reader pays. The Content Creator Terms contain the clause most sellers never read: a buyer keeps access to a paid post even if you delete the post, delete the whole channel, or remove the buyer from it. Telegram also says it cannot completely stop a skilled user from saving and redistributing paid content. Do not put anything behind a paid post that you might later need to take back.

Channel Settings, then Reactions, then Enable Paid Reactions. Readers send Stars as a reaction, and the channel owner receives all of them. Treat this as a tip jar, not a pricing model.

The Stars terms let users charge Stars for messages in their private chats and in groups they own, and the paid messages documentation extends this to direct messages sent to channels. The recipient receives 85% and can refund the sender in full.

For private chats, the setting requires Telegram Premium, and three kinds of sender stay exempt: people in your contacts, people you messaged first, and people you exempt by hand. Telegram never charges a sender silently. A message from a sender who has not agreed to pay is rejected with an error that states the required amount.

If your team does business development from personal accounts, this cuts the other way too. A prospect who has switched on paid messages charges your account for every cold message, unless they saved you as a contact or wrote to you first.

Gifts sit next to all of this. Users can send Telegram gifts, and recipients can display them on their profile or convert them to Stars. For most businesses they are a community gesture rather than a revenue line.

This is the section the consumer guides skip, and it is the one that gets bots removed. From the payments page and section 6.2.1 of the Bot Developer Terms:

1. Answer /paysupport. Every bot that sells must respond to it and process payment requests.
2. Publish terms. The bot should answer /terms (or offer an equally easy route to them), and users must confirm they agree before they buy.
3. Offer support through /support or another clearly communicated channel, and tell buyers that Telegram support cannot help with purchases made through your bot.
4. Answer the pre-checkout query within 10 seconds, or Telegram cancels the transaction.
5. Store the charge ID. Keep each payment's telegram_payment_charge_id, because you need it to refund.
6. Refund when you cannot deliver. The refundStarPayment method returns the Stars in full, and the terms say there is no penalty for doing so.

Telegram does not mediate disputes. If you fail to resolve legitimate ones, section 6.2.1 lists the consequences: Stars debited from your balance, removal from the Bot Platform or the store apps, a public SCAM label, and termination of your Telegram account. On the buyer side, the Stars terms tell users who are refused a legitimate refund to take the transaction ID from Settings, then Your Stars, and file a report. Telegram can also withhold or debit Stars from your balance when a buyer gets a refund from Apple or Google for the original Star purchase (section 6.2.4).

The payout path is the same for a bot and a channel, with small differences in the fine print.

1. Stars land in the balance of the bot or channel. You see it in that bot's or channel's Balance or Monetization section, not in your personal Stars balance.
2. They wait. Star balance rewards become available for withdrawal 21 days after they were accrued, per section 4.1 of the Content Creator Terms. The bot terms say "up to 21 days". Ad revenue a channel earns in Gram is available after 2 days.
3. Only the owner can withdraw. The Stars API documentation requires the owning account's two-step verification password, so set one before the first payout, not during it.
4. Fragment pays out. The withdrawal opens a page on Fragment where you submit a TON wallet address. Telegram's current developer documentation calls the payout currency Gram, the coin its 2024 announcements called Toncoin.
5. There is a minimum and a maximum per withdrawal. Both are Telegram configuration values shown in the app rather than numbers in the terms. To withdraw more than the maximum, you repeat the process.

Three limits belong next to this. Fragment may be unable to issue rewards to certain users or in certain countries (section 4.4). Earned Stars are valid for 3 years and are forfeited after that (bot terms 6.2.7, creator terms 4.7). And taxes are entirely yours: Telegram will not calculate, report or pay them for you (section 6.4).

The alternative to a payout is advertising. Stars spent on Telegram Ads for that same bot or channel count as 0.02 USD of ad credit each, according to section 6.2.3, which Telegram's API documentation describes as a 30% discount.

Searches for a Stars to USD rate mostly land on exchange sites quoting a "STAR price". Those are not Telegram. Telegram publishes two values, and neither is the price a buyer pays:

At the reward value, 10,000 Stars come to 130 USD before tax. Telegram says it sets that value at its sole discretion and that it has no connection to what Stars cost buyers in any region.

The purchase price is not printed in the terms. A buyer sees it in their own currency on the Stars top-up screen. As a seller, you see an estimated value of your balance in the Monetization section, and the creator terms call that figure an approximation, not a guaranteed price. Price your products by what you receive, not by what the buyer pays.

On most of this blog we argue that bots were the wrong abstraction for business Telegram, because a bot cannot start a conversation and cannot work inside the personal accounts where deals already live. We lay that case out in Telegram bot vs Telegram CRM.

Payments are the boundary of that argument, and it would be dishonest to blur it. Telegram's payments FAQ asks "Do I need a bot to accept payments?" and answers yes. A Stars invoice is a Bot API object. At checkout, nobody cares whether the sender is a person, and a bot is better at producing an invoice, answering a pre-checkout query in under 10 seconds and refunding by charge ID than any human with a phone. Use a bot for the transaction, or the native channel features where they fit.

What the bot does not handle well is everything around the transaction. The buyer who wants to ask a person before paying for a course. The paying member who messages the founder's personal account about a failed renewal instead of typing /paysupport. The refund request that arrives in a DM to your community manager. Those conversations land in personal accounts, often three or four of them, and that is where paid communities lose track of who promised what.

Entergram covers that side and nothing else. It runs on real personal Telegram accounts, not bots. A support team can share one account, or each person can keep their own inside one company workspace, with one interface across 100+ accounts and a filter instead of account switching. For teams that hand paying-member conversations to contractors, the privacy controls can hide usernames and group member information and block editing or deleting messages. See how this works for Telegram support software and for community managers.

The limit, stated plainly: Entergram does not process payments. It does not create Stars invoices, does not see your Stars balance, does not issue refunds and cannot answer /paysupport on behalf of your bot. Those stay with your bot and Telegram's own screens.

Telegram's terms set the reward value at 0.013 USD per Star, and 0.02 USD per Star when you spend it on Telegram Ads for your own bot or channel. What a buyer pays for a Star is a different number. It is shown on the top-up screen and varies by platform, region and tax.

No. A course is a digital product, so a bot or mini app must sell it in Stars inside Telegram, even if you also sell it on your own website. Telegram says it cannot show a bot to mobile users if it sells digital goods through other providers. Card payments through a provider are for physical goods and services.

Star balance rewards become available 21 days after they are earned. After that, the owner withdraws through Fragment to a TON wallet, using the account's two-step verification password. Minimum and maximum amounts are shown in the app.

Create a paid invite link: Channel Settings, then Channel Type, then Manage Invite Links, then Create a New Link with "Require Monthly Fee" switched on. Subscriptions run in 30-day periods. You can also post paid photos and videos, or enable paid Star reactions.

Yes, from the seller. Telegram treats Star purchases as final on its side, but a bot can refund a payment in full with the refundStarPayment method, and every selling bot must answer /paysupport. A buyer refused a legitimate refund can report the transaction to Telegram.

No. Entergram is a CRM on personal Telegram accounts and does not process any payments. It helps a team answer the conversations around a paid community, such as pre-sale questions and member support, from shared or individual accounts in one workspace.

List every product you sell to Telegram users and give each one a row in the table near the top. Any digital product currently sold by card inside a bot needs to move to Stars before Telegram moves your bot out of the mobile apps. Any channel product you are selling by hand can probably become a paid invite link this week.

Then look at where your paying members actually write to you. If the answer is three phones and a shared password, that is the part to fix next. Entergram's 3-day free trial needs no credit card, and it will not touch your payments.