Payments
Prepaid wallets, Stripe checkout
Users buy credits before they use them. No surprise bills. Stripe handles checkout; Chargly syncs purchases to wallet balances. Simple for users, compliant for you.
The friction
Billing complexity slows down AI products
Early-stage AI products need to charge for usage, but building payment flows from scratch is a distraction. Custom checkout UIs, webhook handling, balance sync — it adds up. Developers want to focus on the product, not billing infrastructure. And users don't want surprise bills; they want to know what they're spending before they spend it.
Why the old approach breaks
Post-paid usage creates friction
Billing users after the fact — based on token counts or API calls — leads to support issues and churn. Users get shocked by bills. Disconnected tooling — Stripe here, usage logs there, manual reconciliation — doesn't scale. Prepaid credits avoid that. Users fund their wallet, consume, and top up when low. No surprises.
Example
A wallet top-up
User has 47 credits left. They choose the 500-credit pack ($9.99). Stripe Checkout opens. They pay. Webhook fires. Chargly adds 500 to their wallet.
47
credits
547
credits
The flow
Wallet → Checkout → Top-up
Connect your Stripe account. Define credit packs. Chargly creates checkout sessions; Stripe handles the payment flow. Webhooks confirm; Chargly syncs. No custom UI. No manual sync.
Wallet
User has credit balance. Metering deducts on AI actions.
Checkout
User clicks Buy credits. Stripe Checkout opens. User pays.
Top-up
Webhook confirms. Chargly adds credits to wallet. Done.
Where it fits in the product
Wallets, metering, SDK, MCP
Stripe top-ups feed into credit wallets. Those wallets are what metering deducts from. The SDK and MCP both use the same wallet system. One balance, one source of truth. Stripe for money in, Chargly for credits.