Question 1

Isn't this what Orb, Metronome, or Stripe credits already do?

Accepted Answer

Those are excellent at one thing: prepaid credits that draw down against usage they meter and invoices they produce. They don't pay value out (no agent bounties, contributor rev-share, marketplace commissions, or two-sided referral rewards), and their credit ledger is locked to their own billing. Stripe even splits it in two: credit grants for invoices, Connect for payouts, with no shared ledger between them. Scrip is the one double-entry ledger across both directions and across your whole stack. If all you need is prepaid usage against one biller, use theirs. If value moves out and across systems, that's us. And there's a structural reason it stays that way: the major metering vendors are being acquired by payment processors. The ledger of record for what you owe shouldn't be owned by one of your payment rails.

Question 2

What is a credit and payout ledger for AI products and agent platforms?

Accepted Answer

Scrip is the ledger for everything your product owes. It ingests signup, usage, top-up, and agent-completion events, applies your credit, promo, bounty, and commission rules, and records each as a journal entry: credits drawn down on one side, bounties, payouts, and rewards owed out on the other. Developers integrate the API; operators run the program from the dashboard.

Question 3

Does Scrip replace my metering or billing system?

Accepted Answer

No. Scrip sits next to it. Your metering vendor meters and prices usage, your processor charges cards, and your payouts provider moves money; Scrip runs the ledger across all of them and tells each what to apply or pay.

Question 4

Does Scrip meter usage or move money?

Accepted Answer

No to both. You meter usage and send Scrip the events; Scrip draws the balance down and keeps the ledger. When a payout is due it records what's owed and emits an event; your payouts provider moves the money. Charges, refunds, and payouts stay in your stack.

Question 5

Can Scrip check a balance and gate a request in real time?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it's a common reason teams build a ledger in-house. Billing-vendor credits reconcile at invoice finalization, so they can't answer "does this account have enough credit to serve this request right now?" Scrip exposes a real-time balance read and a hold: reserve credit before a run with a reference you correlate, then release it on success or void it on failure. You gate at serving time instead of discovering an overage on the invoice.

Question 6

Why is one ledger across the stack better than each vendor's own credits?

Accepted Answer

Because a metering vendor's credits can only see its own invoices, and a payouts provider only sees money it sends. Neither can tell you, in one place, what credit a customer holds and what you owe out in bounties and commissions. Scrip is that single auditable balance, so finance reconciles credit liability, deferred revenue, and payouts owed together instead of stitching three systems by hand.

Question 7

Can finance get deferred-revenue and breakage reporting on credits?

Accepted Answer

Yes. This is where billing tools are weakest. Prepaid credits are a liability until consumed, and unused credit becomes breakage; under ASC 606 that is the same accounting as loyalty points, and it is not what a metering or billing tool is built to produce. Scrip keeps a double-entry ledger of every grant, draw-down, expiration, and payout, and produces a report finance can sign off on: how the credit liability changed over the period and what is scheduled to expire. It is the one angle that holds even if you bill through a single vendor.

Question 8

Can I pay agents, contributors, or marketplace sellers?

Accepted Answer

Yes. This is the half metering credits don't cover. Bounties, contributor rev-share, and marketplace commissions are rules against the events you send. Scrip records what's owed, holds and reverses it by your rules, and emits a payout event your provider settles.

Question 9

What happens when a run fails or a charge is refunded?

Accepted Answer

You write a rule for it, and Scrip makes the reversal clean. Send the event, a failed run, a refunded top-up, or a disputed charge, and your rule reverses just what it should: claw the bounty back, reverse the credit, unwind the charge. Because it is a real ledger, Scrip can reverse a single entry instead of making you void a whole invoice to fix one line, which is the corner most billing-credit features paint you into.

Question 10

Can we change credit and payout rules without shipping code?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Grant rules, draw-down order, expirations, bounties, commission rates, and tiers live in the dashboard or API and change anytime without a deploy.

Question 11

We could build this in-house. Why use Scrip?

Accepted Answer

You can add a credit counter quickly. The hard part is draw-down across grant types, expirations, refund and failed-run reversals, concurrent balance updates, paying value out to multiple parties, deferred-revenue and breakage reporting, audit history, and migrating live balances later without losing a cent. Scrip is the accounting system underneath the credits and payouts, the part you’d otherwise spend a year building and maintain forever.

Question 12

When is Scrip overkill?

Accepted Answer

If your whole program is customers prepaying their own usage against a single biller, that biller's credits likely cover it, with two exceptions: if you need to gate requests in real time, or if finance needs deferred-revenue and breakage reporting on those credits, Scrip earns its place even with one biller. Otherwise, wait until value goes multi-party and multi-directional, paid out as well as drawn down, and spread across more than one system.

Credits and payouts that always add up.

You pay rewards out, not just sell credits.

From usage credits to agent payouts.

Usage credits

Promotional & free credits

Agent rewards & bounties

Contributor incentives

Marketplace commissions

Referral credits

Top-ups & auto-refill

One running balance for all of it.

Sits next to your stack. A replacement for none of it.

AI products & agent platforms, answered.

See if Scrip fits your credit and payout system.