How to take card payments in a mini app
Payment inside a mini app goes through your own merchant account: YooKassa or T-Bank. The money reaches you directly and we are not part of the settlement at all. Here is what that means in practice.
Whose money and whose receipt
The payment is created in your merchant account and lands in your account. We do not hold it, do not forward it and take no percentage: our share is the monthly plan fee, and it does not depend on how much you sold.
Responsibility follows the same line: your till issues the receipt, refunds are made in its cabinet, and a dispute with a buyer is settled under your contract with it. If the till needs line items on the receipt, they are configured there.
What has to be connected
You need a contract with YooKassa or T-Bank and the keys from their cabinet. They are entered once in the Publish dialog; until then the pay button in the app works but no payment is created — handy for assembling and checking the screens in advance.
The legal side is yours: YooKassa signs with a company, a sole trader or a self-employed person, T-Bank with a sole trader or a company holding a T-Bank business account. Each has its own document requirements, and the builder cannot speed that up.
What the buyer sees
Someone picks a product or a service and reaches the payment: the till’s payment page opens — YooKassa or T-Bank — and after paying they return to the app. No sign-up, no password: the app already knows who they are, from the messenger.
After payment the order reaches your Telegram and stays as a row in the app’s table, where its status is changed. No separate order system is needed to begin with.
Other questions
- Can payments be taken without a merchant account?
- Not inside the app: the payment is created by the merchant account. But the app works perfectly well without payment — a request, a booking or an order paid on delivery needs none.
- Do you take a commission on sales?
- No. The commission is your merchant account’s, under your contract with it. We take only the monthly plan fee.
- What if I am an organiser and the money should reach several people?
- Each organiser can have their own till. The app owner sends them a one-time link, the organiser enters their own YooKassa or T-Bank keys, and the money for their tickets goes to them directly, past the owner; the receipt and refunds are theirs too. Splitting one payment between several recipients is not possible.
- Can a buyer with a foreign card pay?
- No. The owner’s till is Russian, and a card from a bank abroad does not go through it. Taking Telegram Stars inside the app is still on the way.