Twitter has announced that it is rolling out a new ‘Tip Jar’ feature that allows users to directly send money to their favourite accounts, opening up a way for people to support each other on the platform “beyond Follows, Retweets, and Likes.”
Currently, the feature for accepting money via the ‘Tip Jar’ will be made available only for a select groups of users such as creators, journalists, and nonprofits, while all English language users on the platform can tip, the company said.
The transactions are enabled via a variety of payment options including, Bandcamp, Patreon, Paypal, Cash App, and Venmo, with Twitter taking no cut in the process, it noted in a blog post.
“Tip Jar is an easy way to support the incredible voices that make up the conversation on Twitter. This is a first step in our work to create new ways for people to receive and show support on Twitter – with money,” the company added.
The feature can be accessed via the Tip Jar icon next to the follow button on the profile.
Users can enable the feature from their ‘Edit Profile’ section, where they can select ‘Tip Jar,’ turn it on, and add payment details to receive the tips.
However, the microblogging platform is working out some issues with the new feature.
As reported by The Verge, sending tips through Paypal using Tip Jar allowed one user to see the recipient’s address – a security issue that threatens the privacy of the recipient.
Twitter later responded to the issue, saying it was updating the tipping prompt and “Help Center to make it clearer that other apps may share info between people sending/receiving tips, per their terms.”
In future updates, the company said it would allow more users to enable Tip Jar on their profiles and also add more languages.
