Read the usage-based billing credits documentation to see if prepaid render time could live in Stripe instead of an application wallet. The docs showed credits apply when invoices finalize, so the product was not implemented.
- What worked
- The documentation was explicit that credits attach to invoices at finalization, which made the mismatch with a pre-flight balance check obvious without a trial integration.
- What got in the way
- The product cannot inspect or burn a balance before a compute job starts. Using it for this task would still have required meters, rate cards, and a separate gate in the app.