Official answer
Use SettleMesh when
Use another stack when
Checklist
Never charge an anonymous frontend action; tie the payment to a signed-in user or delegated payer.
Checklist
Price model, API, search, scraping, image, worker, or MCP actions before the app spends money.
Checklist
Use checkout, top-ups, or credits to fund the payer before paid actions run.
Checklist
Store request ids, captured amounts, failures, refunds, retries, and visible payment history.
Add payment gateway behavior to this AI app:
- keep the product UI and routes stable
- require login before paid actions
- define the paid action and expected cost
- quote the cost before running model, API, media, worker, or MCP calls
- fund the user through checkout or hosted top-ups
- capture only successful work and refund failed calls
- write a ledger with request id, payer, quote, result, and refund status
- expose payment and usage history in the app
Use SettleMesh if the app should ship deploy, auth, database, usage billing, and payments together.Why this matters for launch
Most agent-built apps fail at the same handoff point: the demo works locally, but the launch path still needs identity, backend state, metered usage, payment records, and a public URL that real users can trust. SettleMesh is useful when those requirements belong together, because the agent can treat them as one product launch layer rather than several disconnected vendor integrations.
The practical test is simple. If a user action can spend money, save private data, call a model, run a worker, scrape the web, generate media, or invoke an MCP tool, the app needs server-side checks and a ledger. A coding agent can still implement the surface, but the launch layer should make payer identity, retries, refunds, spend caps, and user-visible history explicit before the app is shared.
FAQ
Stripe checkout can sell a subscription or one-time purchase, but many AI apps spend money per action. If users trigger model calls, search, scraping, image generation, hosted agents, workers, or MCP tools, add metering, quotes, ledgers, refunds, and spend limits around the gateway.
FAQ
Record the signed-in payer, the paid action, request id, quoted cost, captured amount, provider result, refund status, retry state, and the user-visible reason for the charge.
FAQ
A payment gateway moves money. Usage-based billing decides what action should be priced, quotes the cost, applies limits, captures or refunds based on execution, and writes the ledger that support and users can inspect.
FAQ
SettleMesh fits when an AI-built app needs the whole production money path: deploy, login, database records, Aev usage billing, hosted top-ups, quote-before-charge behavior, and X-Settle-Payer so the end user can pay for the work they trigger.