Introducing Payments for Digital Goods and Services

With the upcoming Telegram update, your bots and mini apps will be able to sell digital goods and services.

To allow for this change in compliance with third-party store terms, we are rolling out a new in-app currency, Telegram Stars. Users will soon be able to acquire Stars from Telegram using standard Apple and Google in-app purchases and then use them to buy digital goods and services from you.

All payments for digital goods and services have to be carried out exclusively in Telegram Stars. If digital goods and services can be purchased for your bot or mini app on other platforms, like your external website, the same goods and services must also be available for purchase with Telegram Stars, in compliance with Apple Review Guideline 3.1.3(b).

To accept payments for digital goods and services, starting with Bot API 7.4, you can use the sendInvoice or createInvoiceLink methods with the currency field set to "XTR" and the provider_token field left empty. To refund payments, you can use the refundStarPayment method.

💎 Developers will be able to withdraw Telegram Stars using the TON blockchain.

⚠️ Payments for physical goods and services are unaffected by this change and can continue operating as usual.

Along with these changes, Bot API 7.4 adds even more improvements for all bots, like:

• Support for visual effects, which bots can attach to messages via the new message_effect_id parameter.
• Support for expandable blockquote text entities.
• Captions that can be shown above the respective media via the new show_caption_above_media parameter.

• And more, see the full changelog for details.