I built a tool because Telegram creators can’t get paid

I built a monetization tool for Telegram creators… because they’re getting robbed (quietly)

Over the past few months, I kept noticing something strange:

Some Telegram creators have insanely engaged audiences
10k, 50k, even 100k+ members

But they make little to no money.

Not because people won’t pay.
But because there’s no clean way to charge.

So what do they do instead?

• Ask users to send money via M-Pesa (mobile money for East Africa)manually
• Share screenshots for “proof of payment”
• Manually add/remove users from groups
• Lose subscribers constantly due to friction

It’s messy. It doesn’t scale. And money leaks everywhere.

That’s why I started building Swara → https://useswara.com

Swara lets Telegram creators:
• Charge subscriptions
• Receive tips
• Automatically manage access

No spreadsheets. No DMs. No chaos.

What surprised me most wasn’t the problem it was how many creators were already trying to monetize despite the friction.

Right now I’m:
• Talking to creators daily
• Iterating on onboarding
• Trying to get the first 100 paying users

If you’ve ever run a Telegram channel (or paid for one), I’d love to hear:

How are you currently handling payments?

Also happy to get brutally honest feedback on the idea.

Let’s build something useful.