Membership for my telegram channel

One thing worth checking before coding too much is Telegram Payments providers in BotFather, not only Stripe. Some countries have local processors there, but for adult you really need read TOS first because they approve account and then freeze later when traffic starts.

If you go CCBill/Segpay/Epoch route, ask them directly if “paid Telegram channel access” is allowed. Some are fine with adult site rebills but weird about delivering content inside TG. Better to know before you wire webhooks and build the kick/expire logic.

if stripe is blocked in your country you should just look into registering a UK LTD. it costs like 12 or 15 pounds online and you can use it to get a stripe account using Wise or Payoneer for payouts. did this last year for a couple of projects and it saves a lot of hassle.

for the bot part, don't bother coding the subscription logic yourself if you are struggling with the integration. look at invite member or similar bots. they handle the payment gateways, generate the unique invite links, and auto kick people when the sub expires. pretty sure they support a bunch of different processors too so you aren't just limited to stripe.

solid thread on the payment side. worth zooming out for a sec though: for a PAID channel the processor fee is almost a rounding error next to the real cap, which is how many members actually feed the paywall. 100 members converting at 5% paid is 5 subscribers, and no stripe-vs-stars setup changes that number. so once payments work, the lever that actually moves revenue is top of funnel: getting enough real members in that even a modest paid-conversion is a meaningful figure. a lot of people fixate on shaving the 40% stars cut while quietly optimizing the fee on a tiny base. the 40% on a bigger real base beats a 3% processor on almost nothing. @pantyous whats the rough member count youre working with right now? that decides whether payments or growth is even your real bottleneck today.

@Nexora550 is right about the UK LTD route, that is usually the cleanest way if you want a proper Stripe account from an unsupported country. but if you don't want to deal with the company registration and taxes just yet, look into Sellix or Billgang. i used Sellix for a Telegram channel setup last year and they already have the bot integration built-in to handle the invites and kicks. they support cards, paypal, and crypto, and you don't necessarily need your own Stripe account depending on how you set up the gateways. saves you from coding the webhook logic yourself which is always a headache...

the invitemember / sellix route is the right call if you just want to launch this week, but theres a cost people skip past: with those you dont really own the subscriber, they sit between you and the member, you get the kick/invite mechanics but not the retention levers. and on a subscription the money doesnt leak where everyone is looking. its not the processor fee, its involuntary churn, the failed card rebills, which is often 20-40% of your cancels and has nothing to do with the member actually wanting to leave. a dumb dunning flow, retry the card a few times, dm them before the kick, give a one-tap re-up link, recovers a real chunk of that, and most turnkey bots do it badly or not at all. if youre rolling your own anyway thats the piece actually worth the time, not the invite-link generation. are you planning monthly rebills or just one-and-done access they manually renew?

honestly the uk company route is the cleanest long term but if you just want to test the waters without spending money on incorporation... look into telegram stars. yeah the 30% cut sucks but it solves the payment processing issue instantly for credit cards and works globally. you can use a simple bot to gate the channel based on star balances. otherwise just find a local payment gateway in your country that has a decent API and connect it to telegram using make or zapier. it takes like an hour to set up the webhook to invite and kick users.

honestly if you want to avoid the uk company setup and still take credit cards, you could look into a merchant of record like paddle or lemon squeezy. they handle the card processing and tax stuff globally, then just pay you out. not sure what their current policy is on telegram channels though, they can be kinda strict about what they classify as digital products vs services.

but if you do go the stripe route with a uk ltd, just be ready for the accounting fees. it sounds cheap to set up for 15 pounds but the annual filings and tax returns will eat your profit if you aren't making decent volume yet. if this is just a test, maybe just use a local processor that has a simple api and connect it to telegram via make.com... takes a bit of webhook setup but saves you the incorporation headache.

putting a simple landing page in front of the telegram channel is usually the way to go if you want to avoid getting banned by processors. if you sell telegram access directly on sellix or paddle they will flag you sooner or later because of chargebacks. make a basic site selling a digital guide or membership and use stripe on that... then just use make or zapier to send the invite link. that way the processor just sees a normal digital product and you dont have to deal with the tg restrictions. uk ltd is easy to get but honestly dont do it until you actually have consistent revenue coming in, otherwise the accounting is a giant headache for nothing.

In case Stripe is not availble in your region, try other payment processors that have officially been authrized for your area rather than working around any limitations se by the system. Select a payment prcessor that supports recurring payments along with webhook/AP

the landing page + normal digital product trick already mentioned is honestly your safest bet if you dont want to fight processors over telegram access directly.

but one thing nobody touched on... crypto isnt an either/or thing here. you can offer stars or cards for the people who want easy checkout AND keep usdt as a backup option. dont assume everyone cant handle crypto, plenty can, but you dont force it as the only rail. let the user pick.

for your situation with stripe blocked, i'd skip the uk ltd for now unless you already got steady sales. paddle or lemon squeezy as merchant of record gets you card payments without incorporating, just word your product as membership/guide not "telegram access" or they get twitchy. then make.com handles the invite and kick logic, its really not much setup.

whats the niche btw... adult vs normal changes which processors will even touch you.

Paddle and lemon squeezy are the easy card option without incorporating, but keep in mind merchant of record providers really dont like telegram subs specifically. paddle rejected me twice for anything that smelled like channel access, so the landing page framing @Campaigns By Mike mentioned isnt optional with them, its the only way it passes review.

One thing i'd push back on a little... everyone jumping to uk ltd for stripe. if payments arent even solved yet the incorporation is premature imo. get one working rail first, prove people actually pay, then worry about the cleaner setup later.

@marcotwzrd2 has a point about churn that most people ignore. if you go with a turnkey bot check if it does any card retry / dunning at all before you commit, most dont and you bleed subs for no reason. and honestly the answer to payments vs growth being your bottleneck depends entirely on your member count right now, so worth answering that before picking anything.

Whats the niche though, that really does decide half of this.