Earlier this year, Clubhouse announced that it is will soon introduce monetization tools, one of which will be a tipping feature. Fast forward to today, and the tipping functionality has gone live. Christened Clubhouse Payments, it will allow users to send money to their favorite creator on the live audio chatroom platform. Clubhouse says that starting today, all users on the platform can send money to creators. However, the ability to receive payments is currently live for only a handful of creators.

Will you pay a creator even if their content is not exclusive?

The company says that it will expand the ability to receive Clubhouse Payments for more creators in a phased manner. In the meanwhile, the company aims to collect feedback from the test group before the tipping feature is rolled out widely. If you have the Clubhouse app installed on your phone, you can send money to a creator by tapping on the profile picture and hitting the new ‘Send Money’ option.

Notably, Clubhouse says that it is not taking a cut from what users send to creators, as 100% of the money given by users goes into the creators’ accounts. However, a small processing fee will be charged that will go towards paying Stripe, the platform that powers transactions for the Clubhouse Payments feature. However, Clubhouse Payments is not the only monetization option that will be available for creators on the platform. The company has more tools in the pipeline too.

Tipping is here. The next stop is subscriptions!

To recall, Clubhouse is still an iOS exclusive and is currently working on bringing the app to Android ecosystem. While the buzzy unicorn continues to make waves, the bigger sharks in the sea have already aped the live audio chatroom premise rather quickly. Twitter already has Spaces up and running on both Android and iOS. Facebook is reportedly working on its own version.

Telegram has already released a similar feature just a few weeks ago. Spotify has ambitions of emulating the popularity of Clubhouse, and Discord is joining the fray too. Heck, even LinkedIn is also not missing out on the opportunity, and so does Slack. It would be interesting to see how Clubhouse carves a niche for itself while facing competition from rivals with much deeper pockets, resources, and expertise.