Telegram could soon lock some stickers and emojis behind a monthly subscription

While instant messaging app Telegram had its share of dedicated users, it shot to fame after WhatsApp's privacy policy debacle. It is one of the more feature-rich solutions out there, with it receiving many features long before the competition catches up. In the past, Telegram has looked at several monetization options that included ads in public channels. Now, the Telegram Beta tracker (h/t Android Police) has made an alarming discovery.

Mentions of something called "Telegram Premium" showed up in the iOS beta version. The subscription-based service will reportedly let users access "exclusive" stickers and reaction emojis. For now, this appears to be the only perk offered by the service. As mentioned earlier, Telegram is chock full of features, so it's hard to imagine what will get locked behind the paywall.

Interestingly enough, one needs an active Telegram Premium subscription to even view the "exclusive" stickers/reaction emojis in question. This alone could rope in a few few extra users, although Telegram would need to top up its Premium sticker packs quite often. Besides, a user can easily clone the said stickers, defeating their purpose entirely.

Telegram Premium's discovery sits in line made by co-founder Pavel Durov back in February 2021, which stated that the messaging app could introduce a subscription service in the future. However, many of its features would be targetted at businesses. It makes sense, given that Telegram is yet to generate any revenue and plans on doing so starting in 2022.