Prepaid credits are the cleanest way to fund metered usage up front — perfect for AI products where every token, request, or agent action draws down a balance. The Credits benefit grants a fixed number of units to a customer’s Usage Meter balance, automatically, every time they buy or renew. No invoices to chase, no surprise overage bills.
When credits are granted
Attach the Credits benefit to any product and Macropay tops up the balance for you. The timing depends on the product type:
For example, a “Pro” subscription that grants 50,000 inference credits per month gives the customer a fresh 50,000-unit balance on each renewal. A “Starter pack” one-time product that grants 10,000 credits hands them over a single time at checkout.
Want a credits-only product with zero risk of overage? Skip the metered price
entirely. With no price attached to the meter, billing never triggers — the
customer simply spends down what you granted. See
Credits for usage-based billing. Rollover unused credits
By default, leftover credits expire when the cycle ends. Enable Rollover unused credits to carry the unused balance forward instead: whatever a customer doesn’t spend this cycle is added on top of next cycle’s grant. Toggle the checkbox when you create or edit the benefit.
Rollover changes apply only to credits issued after the change. Credits
already on a customer’s balance keep the rollover behavior they were granted
with.
Reading the balance in your app
To gate features or show a usage widget, read the customer’s current meter balance. The simplest path is Customer State, which returns the full customer object including the balance of each active meter. For a single meter, query the Customer Meters API directly.
Macropay tracks the balance but does not block usage when it hits zero —
if there’s a metered price, the overage is billed; if there isn’t, spending
simply continues. Enforce your own limits wherever you need a hard stop.
Why prepaid credits fit AI billing
Because Macropay is the Merchant of Record, every credit purchase is sold by us — we collect and remit sales tax and VAT worldwide, and your tax liability stays capped at one flat fee. That removes a real headache for usage-based AI products selling into dozens of jurisdictions.
Credits also pair naturally with agent and AI workloads: fund a balance with one purchase, meter it down per token or per action, and grant a fresh allotment each cycle. Combined with usage-based metering, it gives you prepaid AI billing without building a balance ledger yourself. 
