Buy Me a Coffee

Co-founder and chief executive Jijo Sunny recalled that he started out as a blogger, writing about his own journey and about how to start a blog and earn money from it; at the time he relied mainly on advertising and tried several ad networks. He said his first attempt at a startup was an ad network called AdIndigo in 2010, when he was 15; it was an AdSenseGoogle AdSenseGoogle AdSense is a website advertising monetization program launched by Google in June 2003 that lets website publishers display ads relevant to their content and receive a share of the revenue; its origins are linked to Applied Semantics, which Google acquired the same year.Open the full entry alternative for bloggers and shut down after about six months.⁠[1]

The December 2019 Hacker News post, written in the name of the three founders, states that Jijo Sunny and Joseph grew up in India and that Jijo started making a little money from his blog at the age of 12, which let him buy books and gadgets and pay for web hosting. The post says that their first product, built in 2010, was AdIndigo, an ad network for bloggers that served 6 million impressions at its peak before it had to be shut down because of the expenses; Buy Me a Coffee was their third, and only successful, attempt at building for creators.⁠[2]

Buy Me a Coffee was founded by the brothers Jijo Sunny and Joseph Sunny, who come from Kozhikode in the Indian state of Kerala, together with Jijo Sunny’s wife, Aleesha John. Jijo Sunny left his undergraduate psychology course at Lisa College to start the business; Joseph Sunny completed his Plus Two studies at Chinmaya Vidyalaya and soon joined his brother in the venture.⁠[3]

Jijo Sunny’s first attempt to set up an office, at KINFRA Park in Kakkanchery, met with little encouragement; the fledgling venture then found space at Highlight Business Park, where it was launched in 2015. Joseph Sunny said the idea of making money through YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channels and blogs came from Jijo Sunny and that they wanted to create an alternative to advertising revenue.⁠[3]

Jijo Sunny said the team was then working on Publisher, a paywall product for media companies; the Buy Me a Coffee element of it resonated with people and became a standalone product. He recalled that in 2017, just after Buy Me a Coffee launched, the first “coffee” he received came from Joseph Sunny, who was testing whether the app worked.⁠[1]

The company states on its “About” page that the team began designing the platform in 2017; Jijo Sunny and Joseph Sunny were themselves creators earning a modest income from advertising, an experience that led to the product. The page argues that advertising models and algorithms are unreliable and that a creator’s direct relationship with an audience is more dependable.⁠[4]

Jijo Sunny had been an active user of “Buy Me A Beer” plugins. The idea also drew on the local custom in Kerala of buying a friend a cup of tea when meeting; the platform began gaining traction by 2017, and its first users were people offering online classes in yoga, music, painting and photography.⁠[5][3]

Buy Me a Coffee launched on Product HuntProduct HuntProduct Hunt is a product-discovery and launch community founded by Ryan Hoover in 2013 and operated by Product Hunt, Inc. Makers present new products, while users vote, comment and review them and discover tools through categories, forums and AI search. AngelList announced its acquisition in 2016; as of November 2026, its official website lists Rajiv Ayyangar as CEO.Open the full entry on January 4, 2018, with the tagline “A simple, meaningful way to fund your creativity.” It ranked first for the day and for the week and second for the month of January 2018. Y Combinator’s company directory gives 2018 as the year the company was founded.⁠[6][7]

Jijo Sunny said about 15,000 creators joined in the 30 days after the launch and that the communities of Hacker News and Product Hunt had helped it greatly; the first product was simply a donation link with a polished design, with its features deliberately limited but usable; the team called themselves “designers at heart” and put heavy emphasis on design.⁠[5]

On May 23, 2018, the team launched “Coffeelinks by Buy Me A Coffee” on Product Hunt with the tagline “Easiest way for creators to sell online”; it ranked first for the day and third for the week.⁠[6]

In Product Hunt’s 2018 Golden Kitty Awards, Buy Me a Coffee was named the number one fintech product of the year for 2018.⁠[6]

The company belongs to Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 batch (W19). Y Combinator’s company directory lists three founders: Jijo Sunny, the chief executive, Joseph Sunny and Aleesha John. The Kozhikode team spent three months in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, in 2019.⁠[7][3]

The show notes of an August 2024 episode of the podcast Indie Bites mention that Jijo Sunny had “a stint in YC with a podcasting app.”⁠[8]

On October 21, 2019, “Buy Me a Coffee 2.0” launched on Product Hunt with the tagline “Give your audience a way to thank you”; it ranked first for the day and third for the week.⁠[6]

As of November 1, 2019, Jijo Sunny said the platform had passed 70,000 creators and that most of the growth had come in the preceding three months, which he attributed to adding PayPalPayPalPayPal Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: PYPL) is an American digital payments company that operates payment brands including PayPal, Venmo, Braintree, and Xoom, providing online and in-store payments, money transfers, and consumer credit to consumers and merchants worldwide.Open the full entry support; requests from users in Indonesia and parts of Europe had prompted the integration.⁠[5]

He explained at the time that a creator could set up a button or page in about two minutes, that supporters could pay without signing up and could leave a comment with their support, an idea borrowed from tipping on Twitch; more than half of the platform’s transactions came from tips, and the company avoided the word “donations” because it was not accurate for some creators. The interviewer noted in a question that the platform also offered subscriptions like Patreon’s. Jijo Sunny called the tipping culture in which supporters thank a creator with a coffee after consuming the content the “Gratitude Economy,” and said that of a creator’s audience of tens of thousands about 1% to 5% would support them financially, directly.⁠[5]

On December 3, 2019, Jijo Sunny posted “Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you” on Hacker News, introducing Joseph, Aleesha and Jijo as the founders and the product as a way to accept contributions and recurring memberships from an audience. The post explained that the product began as a side project, a quick way to set up a page or a button to accept one-time contributions, which artists, open-source developers and YouTubers found an unobtrusive way to monetize their work; that some creators noticed they were getting more contributions than with a Patreon or PayPal button, probably, the post said, because the payment flow required no sign-up; and that supporters could leave a note after paying, which became a “wall of love” for creators. By then creators could accept recurring payments and give rewards in return; the post named as examples Maria Shriver, who used it to monetize her newsletter The Sunday Paper through a link in the footer of every edition, and Slowly, a self-funded team using it to accept contributions and feedback from its users. It also mentioned widgets for accepting payments on creators’ own websites and built-in email features, and said a community feature for group chats with supporters was being built.⁠[2]

Jijo Sunny said the platform suddenly grew “like 10x” around March 2020. Joseph Sunny recalled that as classes moved online during the pandemic the company’s growth increased tenfold, and that a time of crisis for most companies was “a golden period” for them.⁠[1][3]

On April 2, 2020, the company launched “Creators Working on COVID-19” on Product Hunt with the tagline “Support COVID-19 initiatives. And 0% fee for April”.⁠[6]

On April 27, 2021, the company issued a press release from San Francisco announcing that the platform had reached 300,000 creators and that creators had raised $2.4 million through it in the first quarter of 2021. The release explained that supporters paid $1 to $5 per “coffee” and chose how many to buy, with no subscription or account required; that creators were paid instantly through PayPal or Stripe; and that creators could also offer “extras” such as exclusive videos, links to tickets for Zoom events, art commissions and ebooks. The industry figures it cited were that 97.5% of YouTubers do not earn enough from advertising to reach the U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry poverty line and that creators’ advertising revenue fell 33% during the pandemic.⁠[9]

An article in the Buy Me a Coffee help center dated December 23, 2021, “Discontinuing PayPal (FAQ),” sets out two ways for creators to be paid after PayPal was dropped: Stripe, with money reaching the bank within two business days, available in 40 countries at 25 cents per withdrawal; and “Standard Payout,” paid through Payoneer at $3 per withdrawal, with bank deposits in more than 150 countries and no Payoneer account needed.⁠[10]

The article adds that the company was working with Wise to offer direct bank deposits in more than 60 countries; that supporters could pay by credit or debit card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, with iDEAL and UPI to follow; and that when a membership renewal paid through PayPal failed, the member was notified immediately to resubscribe with a new payment method. It also says the grace period for renewals had been extended and that the new options would “most likely increase your earnings potential.”⁠[10]

On February 24, 2022, Patreon blocked the account of the Ukrainian charitable foundation Come Back Alive, after which many Ukrainian creators moved to Buy Me a Coffee. Jijo Sunny said that when the war broke out many people wanted to help activists, causes and journalists, which had a large effect on the platform’s volume.⁠[11][1]

In 2022 Buy Me a Coffee blocked the accounts of the journalist Aider Muzhdabaiev and the volunteer Serhiy Sternenko; in the spring of 2024 it blocked the page of Wild Hornets, a group that builds FPV drones.⁠[12]

On May 12, 2023, Media Matters for America published a tally showing that at least 27 QAnon figures had raised a combined total of more than $195,000 on Buy Me a Coffee (before the platform’s 5% transaction fee), looking at activity since at least early 2022; it also found more than 240 donor posts using variations of the QAnon slogan “WWG1WGA.” The organization also wrote that some white nationalists had earned money on the platform, whose terms of use prohibited “information you know is false, misleading, or inaccurate.”⁠[13]

After publication Buy Me a Coffee suspended every account mentioned in the article, as Media Matters recorded in an update on May 15. Jijo Sunny responded: “We strongly condemn hate groups and have a moderation team who take them down on a daily basis”; he added that such accounts sometimes slip through when people pretend to be someone else to raise money, and that the company would act as soon as a problem was noticed or flagged.⁠[13]

As of September 6, 2023, the platform had more than one million creators. Jijo Sunny said at the time that memberships were the company’s fastest-growing product and that its shop was the easiest way to sell online; he described the platform as combining the features of Patreon, Gumroad and email marketing tools free of charge, said he saw it as more than a tip jar, and remarked that it would not work at all if it were purely transactional. He said “I wouldn’t trust my instincts or market research,” preferring to launch and watch how creators respond, and held that the gig and creator economies are “here to stay.” He called his co-founders Joseph and Aleesha his “partners in crime.”⁠[1]

Jijo Sunny, his wife Aleesha and his brother Joseph Sunny built Voicenotes, an AI-powered voice-note app: a first version went to selected testers in March 2024, the web app was made public in April, and iOS and Android apps were released. As of May 13, 2024, the app was free to try, with a paid plan at $10 a month and a limited-time $50 lifetime plan; the company said it had earned $100,000 in subscription revenue.⁠[14]

When the podcast Indie Bites released its interview with Jijo Sunny on August 23, 2024, Buy Me a Coffee had processed “10’s of millions” for creators and had a team of 26.⁠[8]

In early August 2024 Ukrainian users found they could not withdraw money from Buy Me a Coffee. The X user BzickOff was unable to withdraw $30 to a Ukrainian bank card, and the support reply she published said the platform was “no longer onboarding new authors from Ukraine”; support explained that with approximately 20% of Ukraine subject to sanctions it had become very difficult to verify and monitor users’ locations accurately, creating a significant risk of error. Another Ukrainian X user confirmed the problem with withdrawals to Ukrainian bank accounts and said they had got their money out through Wise after changing the account’s geography to the United States. The platform then worked with two payment systems, Payoneer and Stripe, and Stripe does not operate in Ukraine.⁠[12][11]

On August 7 the voice actor and content author AdrianZP posted on X that withdrawals through Wise and Payoneer had been closed, that all authors would be able to withdraw their funds for the last time by August 14, and that many Ukrainian YouTube channels, his own included, might close as a result. A Buy Me a Coffee representative named Tina said in a letter to dev.ua, published on August 8, that the company was disconnecting Wise and Payoneer because they were incompatible with its upcoming features, recommended Stripe Express, available in more than 130 countries, and said of the effect on countries such as Ukraine “це було ненавмисно” (it was unintentional).⁠[15]

Jijo Sunny responded on X on August 8–9 that the company never holds or uses creators’ funds and that when a user is in a sanctioned zone it cannot pay out and refunds the money; on the refusal of new Ukrainian creators he wrote: “That’s evidently for new users. We have thousands of Ukrainian creators with payout method connected.”⁠[16]

The National Bank of Ukraine, in a reply to DOU published on August 9, said such decisions are not required by United States sanctions and financial-monitoring law and are a form of “de-risking,” in which financial institutions end or sharply limit relationships with clients to avoid risk rather than manage it; lacking an official data source on the status of Ukrainian territories, some companies place the whole of Ukraine on their lists of prohibited jurisdictions. The bank added that it had asked the United States Embassy in Ukraine and the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States to bring the Ministry of Reintegration’s published list of temporarily occupied territories to the attention of the United States authorities and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and that it had written to Ukrainian banks on August 6.⁠[17]

By August 15 a support reply published by the creator Eileen showed that Payoneer would remain available as a payout method until November 1, 2024, the deadline in circulation until then having been August 14; the reply also said the company offered Ukrainian authors bank payouts through Wise and that thousands of them preferred Wise.⁠[16][11]

As of August 26, 2024, Buy Me a Coffee had not commented publicly on the reasons for the restrictions or their timing, and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation replied that it had no clear answer on whether the government could intervene. Oleksiy Bondarenko, editor-in-chief of the outlet LiRoom, said the platform had lately brought the newsroom about $300 to $400 a month; the creator Ilona Yaremych said she would lose about 35% of her support if the platform became unavailable; Oleg Novikov, co-founder of the podcast Poplava, said Buy Me a Coffee accounted for only a small share of its donors; and Daryna Zarzhytska, director of Sebto Media, said her team had diversified across platforms in anticipation of restrictions. More than a week after the problem arose, the platform’s representatives began actively responding to Ukrainians’ withdrawal requests.⁠[11]

After the payment companies PayPal and Venmo barred her, the American activist and Donald TrumpDonald TrumpDonald Trump (born 1946) is an American politician and businessman, a Republican who ran the real estate company the Trump Organization and starred in the television series The Apprentice. He served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and has been the 47th president since 2025.Open the full entry supporter Laura Loomer turned to Buy Me a Coffee and urged her followers to support her through it; a post of hers on X put the company in the spotlight and set off discussion of the irony of an outspoken anti-immigration activist using a platform founded by Indians. In December 2024 The Times of India ran an article on the irony of her pushing harmful tropes about Indian immigrants and then asking for donations on an app created by Indian tech entrepreneurs.⁠[3][18]

Desi Community Against Racism, a group with more than 1,000 members, noticed that Irish influencers who post anti-Indian hate were raising money on Buy Me a Coffee and flagged the accounts collectively; a member, Shashank Chakerwarti, said they had together filed at least 100 reports with the platform; he had hoped the founders’ Indian background might make the company sympathetic, but the reports “didn’t go anywhere much.” The company’s website states: “We do not tolerate hate in any form. We take this extremely seriously.”⁠[18]

Dublin InQuirer sent queries to the co-founders Jijo Sunny and Joseph Sunny in August 2025, including one asking why the company had ignored the reports, followed up in late September and sent a direct message to the company’s X account; none was answered. As of October 1, 2025, the accounts named in the article remained on the platform. A spokesperson for the Central Bank of Ireland, invoking supervisory confidentiality, would not discuss whether it had raised the sponsoring of hate on crowdfunding sites with banks.⁠[18]

Gemma Rose, a sex worker in the United Kingdom, said her account had been suspended in May without much notice, the only explanation given being “due to concerns regarding adult content.”⁠[18]

Shortly before August 7, 2026, the company’s new office at Highlight Business Park was opened, inaugurated by Chief Minister V D Satheesan. He said the company had offices in 20 countries and that the government would extend support to turn such innovative ideas into viable ventures, and remarked that some media outlets had portrayed his inauguration of Buy Me a Coffee’s Kerala office “as though I had gone to inaugurate a coffee shop.”⁠[3]

At that time the platform had around 3 million (30 lakh) users and facilitated transactions worth nearly ₹600 crore (6 billion rupees) a year; a “coffee” on the platform cost $5, and a supporter could buy a creator one, five or ten at a time.⁠[3]

As of November 2026 the homepage reads “Loved by 2,000,000+ creators.” The platform’s features are: one-time support, in which a fan buys a “coffee” and leaves a message in a couple of taps without signing up; memberships that renew monthly or yearly and can carry exclusive content; a shop for selling items such as one-to-one Zoom calls, art commissions or ebooks; and posts and audio, free or for members only, with unlimited emails to supporters at no charge. The homepage also says “Make 20% or more, compared to other platforms,” and advertises six new languages (listing Spanish, French, Italian, German and Ukrainian), instant payouts to a bank account and supporter lists owned by the creator.⁠[19][20]

The website also offers iOS and Android apps, a QR code, Stream Alerts and buttons and widgets for a creator’s website or social accounts, and lists integrations including a WordPress plugin, Zapier and Giphy, and its brand page says more than 13 million web pages link to a Buy Me a Coffee page; its footer links to comparison pages for Ko-fi, Patreon, Kickstarter, Ghost, Podia, Gumroad, Memberful and Teachable. The app on AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry’s App Store is free, carries the subtitle “For Creators and Artists,” is listed in the Entertainment category and names Publisherr Inc as its developer.⁠[19][21][22]

The company charges no monthly fee and takes a 5% platform fee on each payment a creator receives; payments and payouts are processed by Stripe, whose standard fee is 2.9% plus $0.30 per successful transaction, with a further 1% for international transactions outside the United States, 0.5% for subscription payments and 0.5% for payout processing, and creators can choose to pass the card fee on to supporters. A payout can be requested once an account first reaches $10; the request is reviewed by the moderation team for restricted content, and approved funds go to the creator’s Stripe account and then to a bank account. Supporters can pay with major credit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay. The terms add that memberships and other recurring payments renew automatically each billing period until cancelled, that no extra fee is charged for an inactive account, that at least 30 days’ notice is given of any fee increase and that payout fees, minimums and currency conversion charges may apply.⁠[20][23][24]

The help center’s list of supported countries, dated October 9, 2026, states that payouts can be offered only in countries supported by Stripe and names 49 of them: 44 through Stripe Standard Connect and 5 through Stripe Express (India among them); Ukraine is not on the list. A first payout through Stripe Express may take 7 to 14 days, and later payouts usually arrive within one to two business days of reaching the Stripe account; once a payout is marked “Transferred” it typically reaches the bank in three to five business days.⁠[25][26]

The Terms of Use state that users contract with Publisherr, Inc., whose address is in San Francisco, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, United States, that the terms are governed by the laws of DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry and that users must be at least 18. Y Combinator’s company directory, by contrast, gives the company’s location as London, United Kingdom, its team size as 30, its status as “Active,” its industries as Fintech and Marketplace and its one-line description as “Helping creators monetize,” and the headline of Onmanorama’s August 2026 article calls it a “Kozhikode startup.”⁠[24][7][3]

The company’s website lists Y Combinator and Stripe under “Backed by” and sets the goal of helping a million people earn from their creativity by 2030. Stripe came on board as an early investor, and Aaron LevieAaron LevieAaron Levie is an American enterprise software entrepreneur and angel investor, and the co-founder and chief executive officer of Box. He co-founded Box in 2005, led the company’s shift from an online file-sharing service to enterprise content management, and took the company public in 2015.Open the full entry, the chief executive of Box, also backed the venture.⁠[4][3]

The Community Guidelines prohibit content that promotes violence, hatred or dehumanisation against any person or group; pornography, adult live chat and AI-generated adult material (artistic nudity that is clearly art and tagged NSFW is allowed); political fundraising and campaign donations; and illegal goods, gambling, financial schemes such as crypto tokens and fundraising under a false identity or false cause. Raising money for a charity, a person or a cause requires stating who receives the money and how it will be used. Violations are looked for by automated tools and human reviewers, and appeals go to a reviewer not involved in the original decision, with a reply within 3 days. The guidelines also bar health and medical misinformation, manipulated or deceptive content about elections or civic processes, resold or pirated work and regulated products such as food, medical items and supplements; child-safety violations bring permanent closure on the first instance with no appeal, payouts can be held or delayed during an investigation, and affected supporters may be refunded.⁠[27]

As of November 2026 the product’s page on Product Hunt showed about 1,500 followers and 26 reviews with an average rating of 3.5.⁠[6]

Buy Me a Coffee: Official website: https://buymeacoffee.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19]

X: Public account: https://x.com/buymeacoffee (opens in a new window).⁠[19][4]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/buymecoffee/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/buymeacoffee (opens in a new window).⁠[19][4]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/buymeacoffee/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19][4]

Facebook: Public account: https://www.facebook.com/buymeacoffee (opens in a new window).⁠[7][9]