Credits

TextKit is prepaid. You buy credits with a card, usage draws your balance down, and a call your balance cannot cover is refused instead of being sent on account. Add credits in Console → Billing.

Buying credits

• Pick $10, $20, $50 or $100, or any amount from $5 to $1,000.
• Your card is saved by the purchase so auto-recharge can use it.
• Your first purchase moves the account off the free tier: every cap is lifted, you can text any number, and live carrier lookups are unlocked. It is also needed before you can buy a number. A balance of zero does not move you back; calls are refused with a 402 until you add credits.
• Promotional credit (a grant from us) does not count as that first purchase: on its own it does not buy a number. After your first purchase it is drawn like any other credit.
• Credits do not expire while your account is open.

What draws credits

Carrier fees are passed through at cost, per segment (the table). Registration fees (brand, vetting, the monthly campaign fee) are separate and are never drawn from credits: they go on their own invoice, charged to your saved card or emailed with 14 days to pay. They are listed under Registration fees on Billing. See Compliance & registration.

Each month you get a statement that itemises usage; your credits pay it.

When the balance cannot cover a call

The call answers 402 and nothing is sent or charged:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "insufficient_credits",
    "message": "Not enough credits: your balance is $0.00 and this message costs $0.0082, so it was not done and you were not charged. Add credits in the console (Billing), or turn on auto-recharge there.",
    "balance_micro_usd": 4000,
    "required_micro_usd": 8200,
    "top_up_url": "https://jointextkit.com/console/billing",
    "failure": { "code": "insufficient_credits", "title": "Out of credits", "explanation": "...", "action": "Recommended: ...", "carrier_code": null }
  }
}

Amounts are micro-dollars (millionths of a dollar). The same code comes back from every billable call: sending a message, starting a verification, a lookup, and buying a number.

With auto-recharge on, a call the balance cannot cover first adds your auto-recharge amount from the saved card and then goes ahead (buying a number included). Only if that charge fails is the call refused: the 402 then also carries auto_recharge: declined (the card was refused and auto-recharge is now off) or unavailable (the card could not be reached; it stays on).

Queued work is not dropped silently and is not retried for you:

• Scheduled messages that come due with too few credits fail with insufficient_credits. Schedule them again after topping up.
• Batches and broadcasts keep running; each row the balance cannot cover fails with insufficient_credits and the results say so. Use "Retry failed" (or POST /v1/batches/{id}/retry) after topping up.
• Automations fail the step with insufficient_credits.
• Number renewals: if a number's monthly fee cannot be covered, the number is kept, never released. Outbound from the account is paused until you add credits, and the fee is taken then.

Alerts

Each fires once, and is re-armed when a top-up lifts the balance back over the mark. We email the account's owner and admins and send a webhook event:

{ "type": "credits.low",
  "data": { "balance_usd": 4.99, "balance_micro_usd": 4991000, "threshold_usd": 5, "top_up_url": "https://jointextkit.com/console/billing" } }

Receipts

Every payment is confirmed by email to the account's owner and admins, once, however many ways the payment reaches us:

• Credits bought (a top-up or an auto-recharge): the amount, the card's brand and last four, the date, the balance after, and a link to the payment's receipt page.
• A monthly statement your credits did not cover: the amount and the invoice.
• A refund: the amount and the card it goes back to. Banks usually show it within 5 to 10 business days. The credits it bought come off the balance.
• A live number bought (the first month, taken from credits, and when it renews) or released (its monthly fee stops).

Promotional credits send no receipt. Billing email is sent whatever your email preferences: it is how you know what was charged.

Auto-recharge

Off by default. Turn it on in Billing: "when the balance falls below $X, add $Y", charged to your saved card. If the card is declined, auto-recharge switches itself off, you are told, and it stays off until you turn it back on.

Disputed payments

If a payment to us is disputed with the card issuer (a chargeback), auto-recharge switches off and anything that draws on your credits is refused with insufficient_credits and a message saying a payment is disputed, until the dispute is resolved (or we lift the pause sooner). If the dispute is decided in the cardholder's favor, the credits that payment bought that are still unused come off the balance. Number renewals continue.

Balance API

curl https://api.jointextkit.com/v1/balance -H "Authorization: Bearer ssms_sk_live_..."

{
  "object": "balance",
  "balance_micro_usd": 12340000,
  "balance_usd": 12.34,
  "currency": "usd",
  "low_balance_usd": 5,
  "auto_recharge": { "enabled": false, "threshold_usd": 10, "amount_usd": 20 },
  "top_up_url": "https://jointextkit.com/console/billing"
}

A restricted key needs the billing scope. The credit history is available as CSV from GET /v1/exports/credit_history.

Credits work alongside a spend limit: the limit is checked first, then the balance.