Release v0.1.6: PAYG Credit & Billing System

12 February 2026

What changed

• Pay-as-you-go credits — New credit system with 5 free welcome credits for every account. Four purchasable packages: Starter (£5/50cr), Growth (£18/220cr), Professional (£40/575cr), Enterprise (£75/1,200cr).
• Stripe payments — Credit purchases go through Stripe Checkout. Webhook handling for payment confirmation and failure.
• Credit gates — Adding a person (1 credit) and screening (1 credit) now require sufficient balance. Requests return a 402 with INSUFFICIENT_CREDITS when balance is too low.
• Billing dashboard — New /dashboard/billing page with credit balance, package cards, transaction history, burn rate, and low-balance warnings. Balance card also added to the main dashboard.
• Monthly billing processor — Cron-callable endpoint charges 1 credit per monitored person per month, with per-person charge records.
• 5 new database tables — credit_accounts, credit_packages, credit_transactions, monitoring_billing_cycles, monitoring_charges.
• Audit logging — All credit operations (purchases, charges, settings changes) are logged.

Why it matters

Screening and monitoring are now metered. Users get 5 free credits to start, then purchase more as needed — no subscription required. Every credit operation is logged for compliance.

Technical notes

• 5 new database tables for credits, billing cycles, and charges.
• New environment variables required: STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, NEXT_PUBLIC_STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY, STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET, NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL.
• Stripe SDK is lazy-loaded; builds won't break if it's not installed.
• API routes return 402 Payment Required with code INSUFFICIENT_CREDITS when balance is too low.