There are Telegram bots that do paywall private channels, a few examples I can mention:
- InviteMember (accepts most payment methods, including Stripe)
- CanalFans (accepts only USDT, and it's only available in Spanish, South American focused)
The way they work is that you add them to your private channel and the bot executes the sale, invites the member and kicks them out if they don't renew their subscription.
On a small scale, it’s probably also quite straightforward to roll your own using Telegram’s built-in bot payments API (which acts as a gateway to a number of processors including Stripe). Not sure if one should, but it’s a possibility.
I've looked into it from the technical side, and it's not that straightforward.
I mean, yes, it's on the scope of a toy project, but it's definitely not on the scope of a weekend project.
My software development estimation looks like at least 2-3 months with at least 3 hours daily on the IDE (on the Subscription Management side, ignoring the payment gateway, that as you mentioned: it's on Telegram already).
- InviteMember (accepts most payment methods, including Stripe)
- CanalFans (accepts only USDT, and it's only available in Spanish, South American focused)
The way they work is that you add them to your private channel and the bot executes the sale, invites the member and kicks them out if they don't renew their subscription.
Of course they take a commission on the sales.