Whop is a payments and business-operations platform for creators, community operators and digital-product sellers. In February 2026 the stablecoin issuer Tether invested $200 million in Whop at a $1.6 billion valuation. Whop was founded in 2021 by Steven Schwartz, Cameron Zoub and Jack Sharkey, and says it has more than 18 million users, with participants earning about $3 billion a year.
Updated October 22, 2026.
On this page: The business · The Tether investment · The founders · How Whop makes money · Who uses Whop · Category context · AI search visibility · FAQ
What Is Whop and How Did It Start?
Whop is a privately held company based in New York that processes payments and runs billing, access and operations for digital sellers. It began as the payments and access layer for Discord-based communities, particularly the trading, sneaker-cook-group and reselling communities of 2020 to 2022. It then expanded to courses, subscriptions, software licenses, gated communities and other digital products.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|
| Founded | 2021 |
| Founders | Steven Schwartz (CEO), Cameron Zoub, Jack Sharkey |
| Series A | $17 million in July 2023, per Wikipedia and CB Insights |
| Latest investment | $200 million from Tether at a $1.6 billion valuation, announced February 25, 2026 |
| Scale (February 2026 announcement) | 18.4 million users, about $3 billion in yearly participant earnings, gross transaction volume growing about 25% month over month |
| Payments product | Whop Payments, launched September 2025, with multi-provider payment orchestration and payouts across 241 territories, per PYMNTS |
What Did Tether's Investment in Whop Involve?
Tether made a $200 million strategic investment in Whop in February 2026, valuing the company at $1.6 billion, according to Whop CEO Steven Schwartz's post on X as reported by PYMNTS and The Defiant. Tether is the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, the largest stablecoin by market capitalization.
As part of the deal, Whop will integrate Tether's Wallet Development Kit so users can send and receive USDT and USAT stablecoin payments. The funding is meant to support expansion in Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Backers named in deal data include Bain Capital Ventures, Peter Thiel, Guillermo Rauch and Insight Partners.
Who Founded Whop?
Whop was founded in March 2021 by Steven Schwartz and Cameron Zoub, with Jack Sharkey as the third co-founder. Schwartz is chief executive officer and Sharkey is chief technology officer, per Wikipedia. Schwartz and Zoub met as teenagers and wrote sneaker bots used to buy limited-edition footwear before starting Whop.
The founders were in their early twenties when the company started, and Whop's path from a reselling-community tool to a $1.6 billion payments platform is among the more distinctive founder arcs in the creator economy.
How Does Whop Make Money?
Whop earns revenue mainly from payment-processing and software fees on transactions that run through its dashboard. Its fee schedule lists domestic card processing at 2.7% plus $0.30 per transaction, with separate fees for international cards, disputes, payouts and optional services. Sellers should confirm the current rates on Whop's fee documentation, because third-party summaries of the schedule disagree.
The model differs from Substack, Gumroad and Patreon, which take a flat percentage of revenue, and from Skool's flat monthly fee. Whop monetizes transaction volume, so revenue grows with the volume of the sellers on the platform. Higher-volume sellers can also buy premium features such as customization and analytics, and Whop runs a discovery layer that surfaces products and communities to buyers.
Who Uses Whop?
Whop's users are trading and investing communities, course and coaching operators, software sellers and content and community operators.
Trading and investing communities. Options-trading Discord servers, crypto-trading groups, sports-betting communities and market-analysis subscriptions are Whop's original segment.
Course and coaching operators. Business coaches and skill-training operators use Whop for billing and memberships, which overlaps with Skool, Kajabi and Podia.
Software resellers. Independent developers use Whop as an alternative to billing directly through Stripe for gated software access, an area that also overlaps with Lemon Squeezy, which Stripe acquired in 2024.
Content and community operators. Fitness programs, exclusive memberships and other gated-content businesses use Whop, in part because its content policies differ from some competitors.
How Does Whop Compare With Skool, Kajabi and Others?
Whop is payments-first infrastructure, while Kajabi is course-first and Skool is community-first. The comparison below shows how each platform is built.
| Platform | Architecture | Pricing model |
|---|
| Whop | Payments and operations | Per-transaction fees, no monthly fee |
| Kajabi | Course and membership software | Tiered subscription |
| Skool | Paid communities with courses | Flat monthly fee |
| Gumroad | Digital product sales | Percentage of sales |
| Patreon | Direct subscriptions | Percentage of revenue |
Passes, the platform founded by Lucy Guo, works in the same gated-content payments category with a creator-first, celebrity-influencer positioning.
Does Whop Content Show Up in AI Search Answers?
Whop's public product and seller pages can appear in search and AI answers, but content inside Whop-hosted gated communities is not indexed and never reaches the retrieval corpus that AI engines draw on. The same gated-community problem applies to LTK, Discord, Skool and Circle.
Creators selling through Whop should build public surfaces that engines can cite, such as long-form writing, YouTube, Reddit conversation, editorial coverage and a newsletter. Whop provides the transaction infrastructure, and discovery has to be built elsewhere.
What Should Creators, Brands and PR Firms Know About Whop?
Creators get billing, payment processing and gated content in one dashboard, with a different architecture than Skool or Kajabi. Brands usually reach Whop indirectly, by sponsoring creators who sell there or by partnering with creators who use it as their transaction rail, much as brands work with creators on Patreon or Substack. PR firms advising creator-side clients on platform choice, gated-content strategy or payments positioning should know Whop, and now the Tether stablecoin relationship as well.
