Estate planning as a Ko-fi account holder

Ko-fi is a platform where creators receive support from fans through one-off tips, recurring memberships, a digital and physical Shop, and commissions. The defining fact for estate purposes is that Ko-fi is a direct-payments service: its Terms of Service state that Ko-fi is not a payment provider and does not process or hold payments, and that payments are made directly from supporters to creators through the creator's own PayPal or Stripe account. The money from a deceased creator's Ko-fi income therefore sits in their PayPal or Stripe account, not at Ko-fi. The Ko-fi-side asset is the creator account itself: the public page, posts, messages, supporter list, transaction history, and any active memberships fans are still paying into.

When a Ko-fi account holder dies, their account may be transferred to a designated person at Ko-fi Labs Limited's sole discretion. A transfer is not guaranteed, and satisfactory documentation is required before processing any request.

What happens at death

Ko-fi's Terms of Service (last updated and effective from 13 July 2026) do not address death, estates, inheritance, account transfer, or assignment, and Ko-fi publishes no deceased-user or estate process, so handling a deceased creator's account is a discretionary support matter decided case by case. The load-bearing structural fact is that Ko-fi holds no money: the Terms state Ko-fi is "not a marketplace, a payment agent or intermediary, financial institution, merchant, creditor, charity, advisor, or broker" and does "not process or hold payments," and that "Payments are made directly from Supporters to Creators externally to Ko-fi using a third-party payment provider (e.g. PayPal, Inc., and Stripe, Inc.)." Ko-fi's help center says the same in plainer terms: creators are paid directly into their PayPal or Stripe account and never hold a balance on Ko-fi. So a deceased creator's funds are addressed through PayPal's and Stripe's own deceased-account procedures and through the estate's bank account, not through Ko-fi. What Ko-fi holds is the account: the page, posts, messages, supporter list, and transaction history. None of that is documented as transferable, and Ko-fi's help center states that deleting a creator account permanently removes the transaction history, posts, supporter list, and all other account information, cancels active subscriptions to that page, and cannot be undone. Ko-fi's help center is silent too: all 120 published English help articles were scanned end to end on 2026-09-16 and none mentions a deceased, estate, executor, heir, or next-of-kin process, and the support form's own "Query type" list carries no bereavement, deceased, or estate option. The only formal records-and-preservation channel Ko-fi publishes is its law-enforcement guide, which is for authorised law enforcement acting under a court order or an emergency justification — an executor is not that, so an estate request is a discretionary support matter. Three recurring-payment traps matter to an executor: fans keep being charged on active memberships until those memberships stop; the creator's own paid Ko-fi subscription keeps charging as well, since the Terms state that "Merely deleting your Account without cancelling your subscription will not stop these payments," so the subscription has to be cancelled in its own right; and disconnecting the page's PayPal or Stripe does not stop them either, because Ko-fi's help center states that active subscriptions "will still renew even if your PayPal/Stripe is disconnected since they're tied to your payment provider rather than your Ko-fi account."

Frequently asked questions