Bluesky plans payments and commerce features in push to monetize without ads

Bluesky is preparing to add payments to its social network. Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt, CEO Toni Schneider and COO Rose Wang said payment features will arrive in the months ahead, the first concrete step in the company's plan to earn revenue without turning to advertising.

Payments come first

According to TechCrunch, the executives described the move as formalizing activity that already exists on the decentralized network, where users routinely sell goods, run fundraisers, and back one another's projects. The aim is to remove friction: when someone encounters something on the network they want to support, they should be able to send money to it directly.

Schneider stressed that the feature is meant to reach beyond Bluesky's own app. The network supports a range of third-party clients, and payments are intended to function across that whole ecosystem rather than staying confined to one product.

A leadership change that unsettled users

Schneider, who previously led Automattic, took over as Bluesky's CEO in March after Jay Graber stepped down following a long run in the role. As TechCrunch reports, he said the reaction to his appointment caught him off guard — some users joked that his arrival spelled doom for the platform, reflecting fears that a change at the top would bring unwelcome shifts to the product.

He also acknowledged that users who dislike what Bluesky ships can simply move to another platform, a reality he said keeps executives answerable as monetization approaches.

The case against advertising

Wang pushed back on the idea that advertising is the unavoidable endgame for a social network, arguing that the common story around monetization wrongly treats ads as both certain and corrosive. She pointed to Schneider's record at Automattic as a counterexample, crediting him with helping build a business she sized at roughly $10 billion in which, by her account, most of the value flowed to the surrounding ecosystem rather than the parent company.

She also cited Bluesky's structure as a Public Benefit Corporation, which she said keeps the company's mission central to its business decisions. Because of how the platform's infrastructure is built, the company has no way to trap users on its product, she argued, and the priority is ensuring that the people creating value on the network are the ones receiving the money that moves through it. She compared today's platform economy to a feudal arrangement in which a handful of landlords dictate terms while everyone else pays them dues.

Wang framed the payments work as an opening move in a broader ambition to remake the underlying infrastructure of social networking rather than simply add another app to the market.

Why it matters

Bluesky has committed to funding itself without ads, and this is the clearest picture yet of what that will look like: elevating the commerce, tipping, and fundraising already happening organically on the network into first-class features. If it succeeds, it offers a template for a social platform whose revenue comes from facilitating exchanges between users rather than selling their attention to advertisers.

It is also a live test of accountability. The community has already shown anxiety about changes in leadership and direction, and because the network's open design keeps switching costs low, any misstep in how payments are introduced risks pushing users toward alternatives. How Bluesky balances generating revenue with maintaining that trust will help determine whether other platforms consider following the same ad-free route.