Payment Rails - cred.diy API documentation
Payment Rails
Cred has three ways to take money, and they differ in one thing that matters more than fees: who the merchant of record is. That decides who a processor terminates when something goes wrong, and it is why not every business can use every rail.
| Rail | Merchant of record | Who can use it | Pays end users out? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe Connectplatform account | Cred | Permitted categories only | Yes |
| Your own keysyour Stripe account | You | Any category | Yes |
| Stablecoinx402, settles to your wallet | No processor involved | Any category | No |
If Stripe won't take your business
Card processors decline a long list of lawful businesses — adult content & services, gambling & real-money gaming, cannabis, cbd & hemp, firearms, ammunition & weapons, and others. Those verticals cannot use Cred's platform Stripe account, because under Connect it is Cred's account that answers for them and one restricted merchant would cost every other operator on the platform their payments.
Everything else in Cred works exactly the same for you: credit types, pricing tiers, wallets, escrow, the API, webhooks. You have two rails:
- Bring your own processor keys. Add a secret key under Dashboard → Payments → Your Own Keys and you become the merchant of record. Hosted checkout, refunds and payouts all keep working. Whether your processor permits your business is between you and them — read their restricted-business rules before you build on it.
- Take stablecoin over x402. No card network, no underwriting, no chargebacks. Set a receiving address and a price per credit under Dashboard → Agent Payments and any buyer — a person with a browser wallet or an autonomous agent — can pay you directly. Funds settle to an address you control; Cred never custodies them.
Which categories sit on which side is set out in the Acceptable Use Policy, and declared per project under Dashboard → Payments → Business & compliance.
The one thing stablecoin can't do
Cash redemption — paying an end user real money for their credits — runs on Stripe Connect Express transfers. There is no stablecoin equivalent in Cred today, so if your credit type is redeemable and you are on the crypto rail, buyers can purchase but cannot cash out. Sell-only credit types are unaffected. If redemption matters to you, the own-keys rail is the one to plan around.
Where each sale shows up
Every rail writes the same ledger. A purchase row carries payment_provider naming the rail that settled it (stripe or x402), so revenue, purchase history and analytics read the same whichever way your customers paid. Crypto payments additionally carry on-chain transaction hashes — see GET /x402/receipts under Agent Payments.
Your first credit is one request away.
Create a project, copy an API key, and issue a credit from your server.