Telegram adds crypto to its messaging app, opening the door to payments

Telegram has now been enabled by the TON Foundation to accept crypto payments. This will allow its 550 million users to access it. users to send and receive toncoin within the messaging app, according to a Tuesday tweet.

Although toncoin (TON), can only be sent through the app, users have the option of buying bitcoin (BTC), via the “@wallet” bot.

According to the TON Foundation, which is the steward of cryptocurrency projects, the goal is to make sending bitcoin “feel like sending a message via text” It stated that the bot had been used by 800,000.00 Telegram accounts.

The foundation stated, “We expect that this functionality will expand into the consumer-to business payments so that people easily acquire goods or services by sending tokens via bots in Telegram app.”

Twitter offers a similar facility, having added bitcoin payments over the Lightning Network for its Tips feature in September, which relies on third-party payments services like Jack Mallers’s Strike app. Last week payments giant Stripe said it will use Ethereum scaler Polygon to enable customers to pay in crypto, with Twitter the first company to try it out.

The TON crypto project was abandoned by Telegram in August 2020 following a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The foundation recently raised $1 billion worth of TON from its users to advance its ecosystem.