Clubhouse, the audio-only social networking startup that rose to prominence in recent months, is gearing up for monetization.

The company just launched a new feature which will now allow users to send money to creators (speakers) on the app.

Clubhouse lets users send tips to creators

How the new feature works is simple — A user can now send a payment to other Clubhouse users by visiting their profile and tapping the "Send Money" button (pic above).

The "Send Money" button will appear if the creator has enabled the feature, and senders simply need to bind their credit/debit card to the app in order to make payments.

While all users are able to send money, the ability to receive money is currently only available for a small group of creators, with the feature gradually being rolled out to more users in waves.

Clubhouse has broader ambitions to support creators

In a blog post, Clubhouse mentioned that this move is "the first of many features that allow creators to get paid directly".

Its founder, Paul Davidson, also mentioned that the startup does not plan to go down the advertising path, but instead look towards monetisation in partnership with content creators.

As the new feature is more of a "tipping" mechanism and not a form of content unlocking from within the app, neither Apple or Google will take a cut off the payment amount — allowing creators to keep a bulk of the money.

“100% of the payment will go to the creator. The person sending the money will also be charged a small card processing fee, which will go directly to our payment processing partner, Stripe,” the post reads. “Clubhouse will take nothing.”

Clubhouse today is valued at over $1 billion.