How to charge a subscription in USDC for group chats
Charge a recurring USDC fee for a Cherry group chat: set price and cadence, sign the 0.01 SOL setup, and see how renewals, paywalls and cancels work.
This guide covers how to charge a subscription in USDC for a group chat on Cherry, the wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto. A member authorizes a plan once in their wallet, and at the end of every period Cherry pulls the fee on-chain: 70% to your wallet, 30% to Cherry, as of 10 September 2026. No Stripe, no merchant account, no KYC on either side. Setup is one signed transaction, and this is written for owners who already run a group and want it to earn.
Before you start
- A public group you own or administrate. Cherry will not put a payment rule on a private group, because a paid group is a storefront that has to be readable from outside.
- About 0.015 SOL in the owner wallet: the 0.01 SOL setup fee from Step 2, plus rent for the two token accounts the same transaction creates.
- A price between 1 and 10,000 USDC per period, as of 10 September 2026.
- A cadence in mind. The editor offers Once, Daily, Weekly, and Monthly.
Step 1: Set the price and cadence to charge a subscription in USDC
Open the group in the Cherry web app, go to its settings, and find the “Access Requirements” card. Switch on “Paid entry”. Type your number into “Price (USDC)” and choose one of the four buttons in the “Billing” row: “Once”, “Daily”, “Weekly”, “Monthly”. The same controls live under “Access requirements” in the create-group flow, so a room can be born paid.
“Once” is a different animal from the other three. It charges the member a single time on join and needs neither an on-chain plan nor a setup fee, which makes it the cheap way to price out spam rather than to earn from a room.
You know it worked when the line under “Paid entry” restates your terms back at you: the price, the period, and the split.
Note: A channel is a broadcast-only group where only the owner and admins post, and it takes the same payment rule, which is how a paid alpha feed gets priced. Mango Inner Circle is one of the public channels on Cherry: 1,671 members and no entry requirements as of 11 September 2026.
Step 2: Sign the setup transaction
Saving a recurring price opens a confirm headed “Activate subscription pricing”, which states the one-time setup fee of 0.01 SOL and warns that changing the price later costs the same fee again. Approve it in your wallet, and one transaction pays the fee and creates the group’s subscription plan on-chain.
The plan carries the price and the period, so a price change creates a new plan and leaves the old one alone. The Subscriptions program fixes the terms at the moment each member subscribes, and subscribers keep the price they agreed to until they cancel and come back. Skip this step and a member who presses Subscribe is told that subscriptions are not activated for this group yet.
You know it worked when the group’s public page shows a Subscribe button with your price and period on it.
Step 3: Decide who pays from today
Recurring pricing adds one more toggle: “Charge existing members now”. Its own description is blunt about the effect: “Members who never paid see the paywall immediately.” Leave it off and the people already in the room keep free access, while new arrivals pay. Periods that have already been paid for are never touched either way.
Turn it on when the room was always meant to be paid and you were waiting for billing. Leave it off when you are adding a paid tier to a community that joined for free, unless you want to find out how many of them were reading.
Step 4: See what a member signs
On the group’s public page, the one every public group gets at its own handle, the join button reads Subscribe, followed by the price and the period. A first-time subscriber sees an explainer before their wallet opens. It names the official Solana Subscriptions program, tells them their wallet may say “any amount” and that on-chain the plan can only ever charge the price shown, and notes that the small SOL deposit comes back when they cancel (Cherry’s in-app subscribe screen puts it at about 0.002 SOL).
A first subscription is usually a single signature; in some cases the wallet asks for one extra setup signature before the consent. Once the consent confirms, Cherry charges the first period straight away, 70% to your wallet and 30% to Cherry in the same transaction, and the member is in the room.
Step 5: Handle renewals, paywalls, and cancels
When a paid period ends, Cherry charges the next one against the member’s standing authorization. A successful renewal is silent: no notification, and nothing for the member to sign.
A failed renewal, which means the authorization was cancelled or the wallet is short of USDC, paywalls the member. This is the part owners tend to get wrong when they come from Discord: nobody is kicked. The member keeps their seat and the member list keeps their name, message content is hidden, and the screen offers to renew at the current price. Topping up and pressing renew needs no new signature, because the authorization is still live on-chain.
Members manage their own billing in two places: the “Subscriptions” row in their profile menu, which lists each group with its amount, cadence, and next charge date, and the “Membership” block inside a group’s settings, which shows “Price” and “Next charge” with a cancel button under them. Cancelling follows web2 manners: access runs to the end of the period already paid, then the next renewal fails and the normal paywall appears. A cancel that has not taken effect yet can be undone with “Resume subscription”. Cherry also compares subscriptions with the chain in the background, so a cancel signed outside Cherry or a payment that landed late is picked up without anyone filing a ticket.
Troubleshooting
- A member is told subscriptions are not activated for this group. The group has no live plan, usually because the price changed and the new setup fee was never paid. Sign the setup transaction again; if you are the owner and hit this on your own paywall screen, the app offers the fee confirm in place.
- The group cannot be switched to private. Remove the paid entry rule first: a paid group has to stay public.
- Clearing the requirements asks for confirmation. Removing every rule from a gated room stops renewals and lifts paywalls, so the app makes you acknowledge that before it saves.
- An invited member landed on the paywall anyway. An invite from an owner or admin is a lifetime comp, a genuine guest pass. An invite from a regular member is not: the invitee joins and then meets the paywall.
- A member paid but still sees the paywall. Hold off on anything manual: Cherry re-checks paid access in the background, and access returns shortly after the renewal payment confirms on-chain.
Related guides
- Paid communities and channels covers the pricing rules, reviews, and storefront behaviour behind this flow.
- Sell access to an alpha group is the commercial version of this page: what to charge, and what to put behind the paywall.
- Create a token-gated group chat shows how to combine a payment rule with a holdings rule.
- Token-gated chat explains the rule types a payment rule can sit beside.
- Channels describes the broadcast-only room type used for paid feeds.
- Whop alternatives for crypto compares the hosted-storefront route with on-chain billing.
FAQ
How do I charge a paid membership in crypto without Stripe?
Set a USDC price and a billing cadence on a public Cherry group, then sign the one-time setup transaction. Billing runs through the Solana Subscriptions and Allowances program, so there is no card processor, no merchant account, and no KYC on either side. Your share lands in your own wallet as USDC each period.
What happens when a subscriber’s payment fails?
The member is paywalled, not removed. They keep their seat in the group and the member list, message content is withheld, and the screen offers a renew button at the current price. Access returns the moment a pull succeeds.
Can I change the price of a subscription group later?
Yes, and everyone who already subscribed keeps the terms they agreed to. A new price means a new on-chain plan and another 0.01 SOL setup fee, and the program snapshots the price at subscribe time, so existing members keep paying the old amount until they resubscribe.
How do members cancel a USDC subscription for a group chat?
From the Subscriptions row in their profile menu, or the Membership block in the group’s settings. Cancelling keeps access until the end of the period they already paid for, and a not-yet-effective cancel can be undone with Resume subscription.
Is a one-time USDC entry fee different from a subscription?
Yes. The Once cadence saves a plain payment rule with no on-chain plan and no 0.01 SOL setup fee, and the member pays it once when they join. Daily, weekly, and monthly cadences create the recurring plan described in this guide.
Sources
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