Twitter Shows Support For Creators in Africa, India, With Paga, Paytm, Barter and Ethereum Tipping Feature ⋆ ZyCrypto

Twitter users 18 years and above can now send and receive “tips” in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and fiat currencies. 

Following an update to its tipping feature which was launched in 2021, Twitter has now added the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap into its tipping feature to enable users to send tips to creators on Twitter through the ethereum wallet. The announcement, which was made In the early hours of Thursday, revealed that the company has expanded its payment options, including its ethereum based tipping feature, to reach more content creators across sub-Saharan Africa.

Added to its existing options like Cash, Bandcamp, Razorpay, GoFundMe, Venmo, The S&P 500 listed company also introduced: Paytm, India’s largest e-commerce payment platform, Paga and Barter—two of the biggest Nigerian-based Fintech companies in Africa—as parts of its commitment to improving the visibility of a growing creator audience in India and Africa.

Hours before the announcement, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, in a Twitter space hosted by Ghanaian-based tech advocate, Ivy Barley, had expressed optimism about the future for Africa to expand creatively, highlighted the commitments of Twitter towards giving voices to rising African creators. For Africa, Parag’s latest announcement makes tipping services available in Nigeria and Ghana—the two West-Africa countries he had visited in 2019 in the company of the then CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey—and India, his country of origin.

Many have also interpreted Twitter’s new expansion and on-boarding of other altcoins as part of an ongoing process to purge the company of Dorsey’s Bitcoin maximalist ideology. While there is no concrete evidence to support this, its recent foray into Ethereum: first with issuing 140 unique Ethereum-based NFTs on Rarible and more recently, introducing Ethereum-based NFT avatar display, shows how Twitter under Parag may become more embracing to the entire crypto community. There are no disclosures about which altcoins will be added next. 

While Ethereum-proponents welcome the recent development, it remains to see whether Twitter may onboard its native domain naming feature, Ethereum Naming Service (ENS).

Twitter discloses that there are no limits to the amount that can be tipped to an individual from its end, and restrictions can only come from third-party payment apps attached to the platform.

The tipping feature supports a broad range of Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets and is only available for users 18 years and above.