How it works
Checkout sells a package of credits, the payment confirmation issues them to the customer's balance, and every billable action deducts from that balance. When the balance cannot cover an action, the product either blocks it, prompts a purchase, or tops up automatically from a saved card.
Prepaid removes collection risk: there is no invoice to chase and no usage you served but cannot bill. It also caps a customer's spend at what they chose to buy, which makes it easier to sell to self-serve buyers who are wary of open-ended bills.
Example
A transcription API sells 10,000 credits for $50, where one credit transcribes one minute. A customer who transcribes 3,200 minutes in a month has 6,800 credits left. Revenue of $50 was collected on day one, and the remaining 6,800 credits represent service still owed to that customer.
Prepaid credits in Cred
Customers buy credit packages through hosted Stripe checkout or x402 stablecoin payments, and credits are issued when the payment is confirmed. Your server deducts credits as features are used, and a deduct that would overdraw the balance returns an insufficient-credits error.
Hosted Checkout docsQuestions
- What happens when a prepaid balance runs out?
- That is a product decision. Common choices are to block the action and show a buy button, to let a small negative balance through and recover it on the next purchase, or to charge a saved card automatically with an auto top-up rule.
- Do prepaid credits have to expire?
- No. Some products expire credits to limit long-lived liabilities, but expiry is a policy choice with legal and customer-trust trade-offs, not a requirement of prepaid billing.
