Clubhouse, a new social media thing that allows people to have live audio-chats with friends and strangers, has introduced “Payments”. This does not mean that people who use Clubhouse will have to pay a fee in order to keep using it. Instead, it gives users the ability to send money to someone else through Clubhouse.
Today, we’re thrilled to begin rolling out Payments – our first monetization feature for creators on Clubhouse. All users will be able to send payments today, and we’ll be rolling out the ability to receive payments in waves, starting with a small test group today. Our hope is to collect feedback, fine-tune the feature, and roll it out to everyone soon.
Here is how Clubhouse payments will work:
- To send a payment in Clubhouse, just tap the profile of a creator (who has the feature enabled) and tap “Send Money.”
- Enter the amount you would like to send them. The first time you do this, you’ll be asked to register a credit card or debit card.
- 100% of the payment will go to the creator. The person sending the money will also be charged a small card processing fee, which will go directly to our payment processing partner, Stripe. Clubhouse will take nothing.
Clubhouse makes it clear that this is the “first of many features that allow creators to get paid directly on Clubhouse”. In other words, if this works, Clubhouse might add more payment features. What will people pay for? I suppose Clubhouse is hoping to find that out.
Stripe is a well known payment provider. Creators who post their work on Medium, and make money from doing so, are paid through Stripe. Substack also uses it. I have no problem with Clubhouse’s choice of payment provider.
My concern is that Clubhouse has a history of not respecting user’s privacy. Users are pushed to upload their entire contact list from their phone.
Doing so gives Clubhouse information about who you are connected to. It will use that information to try and connect you to your contacts that are on Clubhouse. Will Ormus pointed out on Medium that if you have an ex or harasser, who has you in their contacts, Clubhouse will know you are connected to that person and make recommendations on that basis.
What will Clubhouse do with your credit card information? Users will be giving it to Stripe – but they have to go through Clubhouse to do that.