Clubhouse Pilots Payments Feature For Creators As Rivals Close-in, And It Will Take No Cut

Audio-based social media app Clubhouse said on Monday it is testing out Payments, a monetization feature that will enable content creators on the platform to accept payments from other listeners even as bigger social rivals such as Twitter Inc TWTR and Microsoft Inc-owned MSFT LinkedIn eye similar audio-based features to gain market share.

What Happened: The invite-only social-podcast startup, which is currently available only for iOS users, said Payments is currently being tested in a small group of users, feedback from whom will be used to further fine-tune the feature before it’s made available to everyone. 

Clubhouse said the feature will ensure 100% of the payments go to the content creator while the payer will be charged a small processing fee that will be diverted to its processing partner, Stripe - a fintech startup with headquarters in Ireland and North America, which boasts of a valuation of $95 billion. 

The company is projecting Payments as one of the first features that allow creators to get paid directly on the app.

Why It Matters: The San Francisco- based Clubhouse is currently a free-to-use app and it does not run any advertisements. The company may however add a subscription model. It is also exploring options to make the app available on the Android platform.

LinkedIn and Twitter are also trying out Clubhouse-like audio features on their platforms. 

Clubhouse was launched in April 2020 but really came to the fore this year when celebrities such as Tesla Inc’s TSLA Elon Musk and Facebook Inc’s FB Mark Zuckerburg featured on the audio-chat platform.

See Also: Elon Musk Talks Self-Driving, Batteries, Space, Neuralink, COVID-19 Vaccines, Bitcoin In Clubhouse Appearance

Clubhouse was founded by silicon valley entrepreneur Paul Davison and ex-Google Inc GOOG employee Rohan Seth. It was valued at over $1 billion in its latest funding round.

Price Action: Shares of Tesla closed 4.43% higher at $691.05 on Monday and those of Facebook closed 3.4% higher at $308.91. 

Photo: Courtesy of Clubhouse