Frequently asked questions
Architecture and fit
What is Credyt and who is it built for?
Credyt is real-time billing infrastructure for AI products. It's built for teams that charge for usage in real time — tokens, API calls, compute time, GPU hours — and need customers to prepay and manage their own balances. If you're building a usage-heavy product and don't want to front infrastructure costs or build wallet logic from scratch, Credyt is designed for you.
How is Credyt different from tools like Stripe Billing or Lago?
Most billing platforms are invoice-native. Usage accumulates throughout a billing period and payment is collected at cycle end. Credyt is wallet-native: customers prepay, and usage is authorized and debited in real time as it happens. There's no invoice cycle, no end-of-period reconciliation, and no risk of fronting costs you haven't collected yet.
Why does real-time billing matter for AI products specifically?
AI workloads incur real infrastructure costs with every API call, token, or model inference. Those costs happen continuously and can spike without warning. If you're billing in arrears, you're absorbing those costs before you've collected payment. Real-time billing flips that: usage is authorized before it runs, and funds are deducted immediately. You stay in control of margins at the point of consumption, not after the fact.
What does wallet-native architecture actually mean?
In most billing systems, wallets or credit accounts are a feature layered on top of invoices. In Credyt, the wallet is the billing system. Every customer gets a wallet from day one. Credits, balances, grants, and entitlements are first-class concepts with lifecycle management, expiry, and consumption ordering. There's no invoice generation step. The wallet is where authorization, deduction, and balance tracking all happen.
Is Credyt suitable for B2C products, or is it only for B2B?
Credyt works for both. It's particularly well suited to self-serve models where end users purchase and manage usage directly, without finance department involvement. The self-service portal is built for individual users and small teams, not for accounts payable workflows. If you're building a consumer-facing AI product with prepaid credits, the architecture fits naturally.
Pricing and billing models
Can I bill customers in tokens, GPU hours, or other custom units instead of dollars?
Yes. Credyt supports native custom assets. You define pricing in any unit that maps to your product: tokens, GPU hours, video minutes, API credits. Customers hold and spend balances in those units. You're not forced to convert everything to a generic credit type behind the scenes. Different asset types can have independent pricing rules and live side by side in one customer wallet.
How does Credyt pricing work?
Credyt charges per Monthly Active Wallet (MAW) with no upfront fees and no fixed platform costs. The first 10 MAWs per month are free. For built-in payment processing, PSP fees are passed through directly with no markup. What you pay the processor is what you pay.
Can I track which customers are actually profitable, not just how much they're spending?
Yes. Credyt ingests both usage events and their associated infrastructure costs, so you can see margin at the event level. You can track profitability per customer, per feature, or per workload in real time. This matters when infrastructure costs vary significantly by model, task type, or customer behavior, and you need to make pricing decisions based on actual margins rather than estimates.
Does Credyt support credit grants and free trial credits?
Yes. You can issue grants with defined purposes, expiry dates, and spending rules. Grants are first-class primitives in the wallet — not just invoice line items. You can use them for onboarding credits, referral rewards, retention campaigns, or limited-time promotions. Consumption ordering is explicit and deterministic: you define how grants are applied, and it works the same way every time.
Can I give customers a hybrid model with a monthly subscription plus usage on top?
Yes. Credyt supports hybrid billing: a flat-fee subscription combined with wallet top-ups and usage-based charges. Subscription entitlements can be bundled into the wallet at the start of each period, and overage is drawn from the customer's prepaid balance. You don't have to choose between recurring revenue and usage-based billing.
What pricing models does Credyt support?
Credyt supports event-based pricing (per occurrence), volume-based pricing, dimensional pricing (different rates based on usage attributes like model type or output format), and hybrid models that combine flat fees with usage charges. You define pricing rules via API. Rates apply automatically when usage events arrive. No hardcoded pricing logic in your application.
Balance control and customer experience
How do I stop customers from going into debt or running up costs I can't collect?
Credyt authorizes every usage event before costs are incurred. When a customer attempts an action, your product checks their wallet balance in real time and approves or denies the request. If the balance is insufficient, the request is blocked. You prevent negative balances at the point of consumption rather than discovering exposure after the fact.
What happens when a customer's balance runs out mid-session?
Customers can set up automatic top-ups that trigger when their balance drops below a threshold they define. They control the threshold amount, top-up amount, and payment method through the self-service portal. Top-ups are processed immediately, so service continues without interruption. If auto top-up isn't configured, the balance hits zero and your product denies further usage until the customer adds funds.
Can my customers manage their own balance and top-ups?
Yes. Credyt includes a drop-in branded billing portal that customers access directly. They can view real-time balances, see live usage, add funds, configure automatic top-ups with threshold triggers, and manage payment methods. No custom frontend work required on your side, and no support tickets to manage routine billing tasks.
Do I need to build my own customer-facing billing UI?
No. The Credyt billing portal is a drop-in component you embed in your product. It shows real-time balances, live usage, transaction history, top-up flows, and payment method management out of the box. No custom frontend work required on your side.
Integration and implementation
Does Credyt work alongside my existing billing setup, or do I have to replace it?
Credyt is designed to extend your existing stack, not replace it. If you use Stripe for subscriptions, you keep using it. Credyt adds the real-time authorization and wallet layer that invoice-based systems weren't built to provide. Both systems run alongside each other without conflict.
How long does it take to integrate Credyt?
Most teams ship in days. Credyt's API-first design means you're sending usage events, defining pricing rules, and embedding the billing portal rather than rebuilding billing infrastructure. You get wallet management, payment processing, and the customer portal out of the box.
Can I run prepaid wallets for some customers and invoice-based billing for others?
Yes. The two models can coexist. Use your existing subscription and invoicing tools for customers who prefer monthly billing. Use Credyt's wallet-based authorization for customers who want prepaid, real-time control. Each system handles its own customers without interfering with the other.
What if some enterprise customers need invoices?
Credyt can issue receipts through Stripe for completed transactions, but it doesn't provide full invoice management workflows — payment terms, dunning, collection processes. For customers who require invoices before payment, you'd use a dedicated invoicing tool alongside Credyt. Credyt handles the prepaid, real-time side. Your invoicing tool handles the accounts payable side.
Can I test my pricing configuration before going live?
Yes. Credyt has a test environment that's fully isolated from production, with a separate set of API credentials. You can create test customers, send simulated usage events, and validate pricing rules without affecting real customer data. Work in test mode until you're confident in the configuration, then switch to live.