COO of OpenRouter here. Thats right — we haven’t done it to date but we can’t have unlimited liabilities stacking up forever. At some point we will start expiring credits from accounts that have seen zero activity in over a year.
Maybe a bad suggestion, but can you do an inactivity "fee" - 25% / year (min $5) or something similar. I like the pre-pay system everyone in Ai seems to have settled on, its better than the AWS bills that we all know and love.
What if I deposited $10, and have lots of recent activity on free models and have barely touched the $10 for payg models?
Thank you for taking the time to explain that - makes sense. I lifted what was present in your terms of service as I'd like to understand the minimum time I have.
In CA gift cards don’t expire and the industry does fine without having people buy expiring money.
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> we can’t have unlimited liabilities stacking up forever
The liabilities are completely offset by prepayments from your customers though. Even better, you can earn interest on the deposits without paying any out.
If you just dont want the liabilities on the books, issue refunds. Expiring credits feels like a cash grab.