Introducing Telegram Business

Starting today, anyone can turn their Telegram account into a business account – and get access to business features, such as opening hours, location, quick replies, automated messages, custom start page, chatbot support, and more.

Introducing Telegram Business

Telegram has long allowed developers to build powerful bots and mini-apps which were widely used by businesses.

Starting today, any user can easily use business features — without any coding skills.

Hours and Location

Businesses can display their hours of operation and show their location on a map.

Users will know where to find you and immediately see if you're open.

Start Page

Businesses can customize their start page for empty chats, choosing which text and sticker people see before they start a conversation.

This lets you showcase info about products and services or welcome customers with branded artwork.

Quick Replies

Telegram Business allows you to create quick replies. Quick replies are shortcuts for sending preset messages that may contain several messages and support text formatting, links, stickers, media, and files.

This helps you quickly send information that your customers often need – like a schedule of classes or a PDF with your menu.

Typing a / in the message bar shows a panel with all of your quick replies – that you can send or edit in one tap. This only works in private chats, not groups.

Greeting Messages

For more automation, you can set a greeting message that will be sent to users who contact you for the first time. This will ensure they get an instant reply with important info – or just a friendly hello. 

Your greeting may also include answers to frequent questions or more details about your business.

You can specify a period after which a new message will result in your greeting being sent again.

Away Messages

You can also set an away message to be sent when your business is closed or while you're on vacation.

This way people will always know when they can expect a response from your business.

To prevent sending business messages to friends, family, or employees, you can limit any automated messages to exclude specific chats or entire chat categories.

Tags for Chats

With Telegram Business or Premium, you can add colored labels to chats, giving them unique tags based on the chat folders they are in.

This helps you quickly differentiate between customers in your chat list based on their status, needs, or priority level.

All Telegram users can create custom chat folders to organize their chats – adding separate tabs to the chat list for Work, School, News and more.

Links to Chat

To make it even easier for customers to reach out, you can create links to chat with your business – like a button to reserve a table or track an order. When tapped, these links instantly open a chat with you and paste a suggested message for the user.

You can use these links both inside and outside of Telegram – from a link on your site to a QR code on a restaurant menu.

Each link shows how many times it was tapped so you can track its performance.

Chatbots for Business

Business users can connect Telegram bots that will process and answer messages on their behalf. This allows businesses to seamlessly integrate any existing tools and workflows, or add AI assistants that manage their chats.

When adding a chatbot, you can configure which chats the bot can access – such as excluding all chats with your contacts, or only responding to new chats.

This opens a new era for Telegram Bots – we welcome all developers to create new services that will help businesses automate and improve their communication with Telegram users. See our Bot Manuals for details.

Telegram will be introducing new features for businesses in the coming updates. For the moment, all Telegram Business features are available for free to Premium subscribers. You can find them in Settings > Telegram Business.

Supreme Court of Spain Suspends Order to Block Telegram

Today, the Supreme Court of Spain suspended its order to block Telegram in the country as it awaits a police report on the impact of the temporary ban on users.

Judge Santiago Pedraz instructed the national police to prepare a report on "the characteristics of Telegram, as well as the impact of the temporary suspension on its users." As a reminder, the order to block Telegram in Spain was issued on Friday, March 22.

New Telegram Bond Issued for $330 Million

Pavel Durov announced that last week Telegram had issued bonds worth $330 million to accelerate the development of the messenger. The applications for bonds placement were oversubscribed, and on top of this, the majority of the buyers consisted of high-tier, high priced funds.

Telegram has previously issued bonds on:

• March 2021: The first bond placement for $1 billion.
• April 2021: Bonds placed for an additional $750 million.
• July 2023: Bonds were issued for $270 million, about a quarter of which were purchased by Durov himself.

Telegram Business Features

In the upcoming Telegram update, users with a Premium subscription will gain access to a set of business oriented features. Users will be able to specify the location and opening hours of their business, prepare welcome messages, messages to be sent automatically to clients while you are away, and use quick replies.

Telegram's Co-Operation with Malaysia

On Saturday, March 2, Malaysia's Minister of Communications held a personal meeting with Pavel Durov in Dubai. The news was brought to attention by Durov's Code.

The main topics of the meeting were platform regulation and the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence. Durov expressed interest in further discussions about opportunities for cooperation with the Malaysian government to optimize the regulatory aspects of the platform and promised to expand Telegram's activities in the country.

Pavel Durov also stated their platform's readiness to collaborate with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to improve regulation and join forces in combating fraud and gambling. Last May, Malaysia's Minister of Communications reported that Telegram "did not want to cooperate" with the ministry, despite numerous requests for a meeting.

Statistics for 2022 indicate that Malaysia has 32 million Internet users, of which 28 million are social media users. Telegram is used by 56% of Internet users in the country, providing a rough estimate of between 15-18 million users in Malaysia.

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Today Telegram turns 10 years old

In just a decade, Telegram gained over 800 million active users purely thanks to word of mouth. Through numerous updates and improvements over the years, Telegram has redefined what a modern messaging experience should be like.

The next step for Telegram is to go beyond messaging and spearhead innovation in social media in general. We should use our popularity to change the lives of billions for better, to inspire and uplift people on our planet.

Today’s gradual roll-out of stories for all users marks the beginning of this new stage in the history of Telegram. While this past decade was exciting, the next 10 years will be the time when Telegram reaches its true potential.

Pavel Durov on Brazil’s Block on Telegram

Pavel Durov recently made a post in his channel in which he recalled that Telegram’s mission is “to preserve privacy and freedom of speech around the world”.

According to Durov, Telegram has always been on the side of protecting privacy and freedom of speech, no matter in what country it operates. When local laws contradict these principles, the messenger is forced to leave the market. For example, earlier, Telegram was banned in China, Iran and Russia because of its principled position on the issue of human rights.

A court in Brazil has requested data that Telegram is technically unable to provide, and the company is appealing the decision. Durov also noted that no matter how much it costs, Telegram will protect the interests of its users in Brazil and their right to private communication.

Ability to share a folder

In the beta version of Telegram for Android, you can now share folder-based collections of your chats with other users.

Some Features:
• You can set several links for your folder with different sets of groups and channels that are included there initially.
• Private chats and bots cannot be shared.
• You can share access to a private group or channel with users only if you have administrator rights there with the ability to manage invitation links.
• You can only share folders that do not include chats by type (Contacts, Non-Contacts, Channels, Groups, Bots) and that do not contain excluded chats.

• If a folder author adds new groups or channels to the same collection that a user has used, that user will be prompted to join them.
• You can share a folder with others not only using a t.me/addlist link, but also via a QR code.
• Users without Telegram Premium can create links for only two folders, and with a subscription — for twenty folders. The limit also applies to the number of collections that you can add to your account.

Note:
• The application does not warn the user against accidentally adding a private group or channel to a collection.
• If the collection contains a simple group, then after creating a link to the folder, it is automatically converted into a supergroup with all the ensuing consequences.