Get started with usage-based billing

Usage-based billing is a pricing model in which customers are charged based on their actual consumption of a product or service, rather than a fixed, recurring fee. This model allows you to align your revenue directly with the value your customers receive.

With Airwallex, you can ingest high-volume usage data, support complex pricing models - such as tiered or volume-based - and scale your billing infrastructure seamlessly alongside your business growth.

How usage-based billing works

Usage-based billing allows you to charge customers based on their product usage. This is achieved through the following key resources:

• Usage Event: Records a specific instance of product consumption (e.g. an API call or AI tokens used) by your customer. It captures the "who (customer), what (event name), when (timestamp) and how much (quantity)" of the consumption instance.
• Meter: Defines how usage events are measured and aggregated over a billing period. It calculates the final billable quantity (e.g. COUNT of all API calls or SUM of all AI tokens) for invoicing.
• Product and Price: Products represent the goods or services being sold, while prices represent the amount, currency, frequency, and billing configuration for how the product is sold. Usage-based prices are linked to a meter to determine the amount due at the end of the billing cycle.
• Subscription: Manages the billing lifecycle for recurring products, establishing the recurring period over which usage is measured, aggregated, and eventually invoiced.

To see the relationship between these resources in more detail, please refer here.