A Telegram bot for selling digital goods: how it works

A sales bot is not a chatbot that answers questions. It is a second storefront: the same catalog, the same prices, the same stock and the same customer balance as your website, inside a Telegram chat. If the bot keeps its own prices or its own balances, you will spend your days reconciling them.

This guide explains what a Telegram sales bot for digital goods has to do, and how the bot in Kavia Commerce does it.

Identity: the Telegram ID, not the username

A Telegram username can be changed at any moment, and someone else can take the old one. A sales bot must identify buyers by their numeric Telegram user ID, which never changes.

In Kavia Commerce the buyer is recognized by that ID on /start and registered automatically. They do not need a website account to buy in the bot.

One catalog, one balance

The bot reads the same catalog and the same wallet as the website through one backend. A price change in the admin panel shows up on both. A balance topped up on the website can be spent in the bot. Stock taken by a bot order is gone from the website at the same moment.

This is the most important design choice. Website, bot and reseller API share one set of business rules, so there is nothing to sync.

A typical purchase in the chat

• The buyer sends /start and picks a language: English, Russian or Turkish.
• They pick a category, then a product, and choose a quantity or enter a player ID for a top-up.
• The bot shows the cart, the price and the current balance, and asks for confirmation.
• After confirmation the order is paid from the wallet balance and the code is delivered in the chat.

You can try a sample of this flow, in the browser, on our live demos page. It runs without real orders.

Payments inside Telegram: the Stars rule

Telegram requires digital goods and services sold inside bots and Mini Apps to be paid with Telegram Stars. See Telegram's payment documentation. That rules out taking card payments for codes directly in the chat.

Today the Kavia Commerce sales bot sells from the customer's wallet balance, and top-ups are made on the website. Stars checkout for the sales bot is being built. Our payments page shows the current status of every method.

What the store owner needs

• A bot account, created for free with Telegram's @BotFather. The bot token stays on the server and is never shared.
• The Kavia Pro or Max plan, which includes the Telegram sales bot.
• Your catalog and suppliers set up in the admin panel, just as for the website.

Sales bot vs other Telegram bots

The sales bot is part of the store. Separately, Kavia Bots are five ready-made bots for businesses, communities and channels: an AI support bot, a notification bridge, group moderation, a post scheduler and price alerts. They are a different product and do not sell codes.

Next steps

Open the live demo store to see the catalog the bot sells from, and message @kaviasoftbot on Telegram to ask about the bot or admin panel demo access. For the partner channel, see our guide to the reseller API.