> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://staging-docs.crosspoint.finance/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Credits

> Crediting customers for Usage Based Billing

Credits is the way to pre-pay for usage in Crosspoint. It allows you to give your customers the ability to pre-pay for usage instead of risk getting a hefty bill at the end of the month.

## How Credits Work

When you ingest events into a Usage Meter, customers will be charged for the usage based on the product's pricing model.

However, sometimes you may want to give your customers the ability to pre-pay for usage instead of risk getting a hefty bill at the end of the month.

When you issue Credits to a customer, we first deduct the Credits from their Usage Meter balance. If the Usage Meter balance reaches 0, the customer will be charged for the overage.

### Credits-only spending

To avoid any overage charges, don't create any Metered price on your product. This way, billing won't be triggered at all for the meter

## Issuing Credits with the Credits Benefit

![](https://mintcdn.com/crosspoint/UQs51vKfpD2N4tlw/assets/features/benefits/credits/credits.light.png?fit=max\&auto=format\&n=UQs51vKfpD2N4tlw\&q=85\&s=26efa0555d7d1d797f68919f67f31a00)

The Credits benefit will credit a customer's Usage Meter balance at different points in time depending on the type of product the benefit is attached to.

### Subscription Products

The customer will be credited the amount of units specified in the benefit at the beginning of every subscription cycle period — monthly or yearly.

### One-Time Products

The customer will be credited the amount of units specified in the benefit once at the time of purchase.

## Tracking customer's balance

In your application, you'll likely need to track the customer's balance for a given meter. The easiest way to do this is to use the [Customer State](https://staging-docs.crosspoint.finance/integrate/customer-state.md), which will give you the overview of the customer, including the balance for each of their active meters.

You can also specifically query the meters balance using the [Customer Meters API](https://staging-docs.crosspoint.finance/api-reference/current/customer_meters/list-customer-meters.md).

> [!WARNING]
>
> Crosspoint doesn't block usage if the customer exceeds their balance. You're
> responsible for implementing the logic you need to prevent usage if they
> exceed it.


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