To charge Telegram Stars, your bot sends an invoice with the currency code XTR and an empty provider token; users pay in Stars bought via Apple, Google, or PremiumBot. You earn Stars per sale, then withdraw them as TON through Fragment after a 21-day hold. Stars are digital-only and Telegram-native.
Telegram Stars (ticker XTR) are Telegram's in-app currency for paying for digital goods and services. To charge them, a bot calls the Bot Payments API method sendInvoice with the currency field set to "XTR" and the provider_token left as an empty string. No Stripe key, no merchant account, no external processor — the Stars rail is built into Telegram itself, which is why any bot can switch it on without approval.
One critical rule trips people up: Stars are for digital goods only. Ebooks, license keys, course access, channel subscriptions, AI credits, in-app perks — yes. A T-shirt, a physical book, or a coffee — no; those still require a real payment provider token. Telegram enforces this because Apple's and Google's app-store rules (Guideline 3.1.3(b)) require digital purchases inside the app to go through their billing, which is what Stars route around.
Stars also come with native plumbing most no-code builders lack on their own: the refundStarPayment method lets a bot refund a buyer's Stars on demand, and starsSubscriptionPricing lets channels charge a recurring weekly or monthly Star price for private-channel access. So if your entire catalog is digital and you want to live inside Telegram's wallet, Stars are a legitimate, low-friction option worth understanding before you pick a stack.
Earning Stars is the easy half: every paid invoice credits Stars to your bot's balance, visible in your bot's Stars wallet. Cashing them out is where the timeline stretches. To turn Stars into spendable money you withdraw them as TON (Telegram's blockchain token) through Fragment.com, Telegram's official marketplace, then move that TON to an exchange like OKX or Bybit and sell it for fiat.
Two thresholds matter. First, Telegram applies a 21-day holding period before freshly earned Stars become withdrawable — a fraud and chargeback buffer. Second, you generally need a minimum balance (commonly cited around 1,000 Stars) before a Fragment payout can be initiated. Add the 1–5 business days for the bank leg, and realistically you're looking at roughly three to four weeks from sale to cash for your first cohort of earnings.
The fee picture is the part creators underestimate. Telegram itself doesn't skim a withdrawal commission, but the path is still lossy: when buyers top up Stars inside the iOS or Android app, Apple/Google take their ~30% store cut, which is baked into what a Star is worth to you. Layer on Fragment's conversion spread and a small exchange fee, and the effective take on a mobile-funded Star sale can land near 30% before the money is in your bank.
Stars are convenient, but they're a closed loop denominated in a volatile token with a multi-week cash-out and an app-store tax. For a creator selling a $40 lifetime course or a $15/month VIP channel, that combination can quietly eat a meaningful slice of revenue and delay payout past the point where it's useful for reinvestment.
This is the honest dividing line, and where TeleCrow fits. TeleCrow does NOT integrate Telegram Stars — Stars are a Telegram-platform feature, not something a third-party builder can resell. What TeleCrow does instead is let you take payment in crypto (USDT/TON) and by card (via DodoPayments) directly inside your own bot, settling on your terms rather than through Fragment's queue. A USDT sale lands as USDT; there's no 21-day Stars hold and no Apple/Google passthrough on the desktop and web flows.
Concretely: if you want to sell digital files or license keys, TeleCrow's Digital Product bot does instant auto-delivery from a category catalog, with balances, top-ups, order history, referrals, and promo codes — paid in crypto or card. If you want the same recurring-subscription outcome Stars subscriptions give a channel, TeleCrow's Access Control bot sells paid access to private channels and groups with subscriptions, auto-renewal, and promo codes. Same monetization goals, different rail — one you control end to end.
If what you actually want is "charge people inside Telegram for digital stuff," you can reproduce every common Stars use case on TeleCrow using its real bot types — just funded by crypto and card instead of XTR.
Selling files, ebooks, or keys: a Digital Product bot replaces a Stars invoice with a browsable catalog by category and instant delivery the moment payment clears. Paywalling a private channel (the Stars-subscription use case): an Access Control bot gates entry, charges a recurring price, and auto-renews or removes lapsed members. Drip onboarding and upsells that Stars alone can't do: an Autofunnels bot chains menus and timed message sequences so a buyer who grabbed a $9 starter pack gets nudged toward the $49 bundle three days later. And BYOK monetized AI features live in the Personal AI bot, where you bring your own OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini key and charge for access rather than burning Stars on credits.
All of it runs on TeleCrow's managed hosting, with plans from Free ($0) through Basic $3.99, Pro $6.99, and Ultra $11.99 per month, in English, Chinese, or Russian. You keep Stars on the table as a possible add-on inside Telegram if you ever want the native wallet — but your storefront, your pricing, and your payout schedule stay yours.
No. Telegram Stars are a Telegram-platform feature that a bot accepts natively via the XTR currency — a third-party builder can't resell or proxy them. TeleCrow instead lets your bot take crypto (USDT/TON) and card payments (DodoPayments) directly, which avoids the 21-day Stars hold and the Fragment cash-out queue.
Plan on about three to four weeks for your first payout. Telegram applies a 21-day holding period before earned Stars are withdrawable, you typically need a minimum balance (around 1,000 Stars) to initiate a Fragment payout, and the bank transfer after converting TON to fiat adds another 1–5 business days.
No. Stars are restricted to digital goods and services only — files, keys, subscriptions, in-app perks, AI credits. Physical products still require a real payment provider token. If you sell digital items, a TeleCrow Digital Product bot delivers them instantly after crypto or card payment, with no Stars-style digital-only restriction on how you collect funds.
Telegram doesn't charge a withdrawal commission, but the path is still lossy. When buyers top up Stars in the iOS or Android app, Apple/Google take roughly 30%, which is baked into each Star's value to you, then Fragment's conversion spread and a small exchange fee apply. Effective take on mobile-funded sales can approach 30%.
Use TeleCrow's Access Control bot. It sells paid access to private channels and groups with recurring subscriptions, auto-renewal, and promo codes, removing members when a subscription lapses — the same outcome as a Stars subscription, but charged in crypto or by card and paid out on your own schedule.
Sell digital products, gate paid channels and accept crypto — no code, on the free plan.