The Revenue Program
A simple way for developers to get paid for AI usage.
Today, shipping AI inside a real product creates an awkward business problem for developers. You build something people want, usage starts happening, and costs begin accumulating underneath you in a way that’s hard to predict.
You’re usually forced into one of a few paths: you push a monthly subscription (which many users resist), you hard-limit usage (which makes the product feel broken), or you let usage run and hope the revenue catches up later. In practice, that means the developer carries the risk, the user experience becomes friction-heavy, and monetization ends up being the hardest part of building the AI feature.
The Program
The Revenue Program is a developer program that lets you monetize AI features using prepaid credits. Instead of the developer paying first and recovering money later, the end user tops up a balance and spends it as they use AI inside your product. Usage is metered, credits are deducted automatically, and when the balance runs out, AI usage pauses until the user tops up again.
It is a cleaner revenue model for AI in a prepaid economy.
Monetization
The simplest way to understand the Revenue Program is that it turns your AI feature into a paid utility inside your app. Every time a user uses AI, money moves. You are no longer waiting for “conversion to subscription” to happen at some future date, and you are no longer exposed to surprise usage costs without a matching revenue mechanism. Instead, you earn revenue directly from consumption, in small increments, tied to real value delivered.
In the most direct model, you set pricing for AI actions inside your product and you earn a margin on every action. For example, if your product offers “summarize this document,” “draft this email,” “generate product descriptions,” “translate this,” or “create a lesson quiz,” you can price those actions in credits.
When the user triggers the action, the wallet is debited and you earn your share. The key point is that the transaction happens at the moment value is delivered. The user sees their balance, you see the usage, and revenue is generated without any separate billing flow.
Your revenue is tied to usage, and your downside is capped because the user is prepaid. That makes it far safer to ship AI features at scale. It also means you can tune pricing over time based on real usage data, rather than guessing what a monthly subscription should be.
Payout Process
Payouts work on a simple attribution and settlement loop. When a user tops up, the funds become prepaid credits in their Monarch wallet. When that user spends credits inside your app, Monarch records a metered transaction and attributes that spend to your developer account.
For each attributed transaction, the system allocates the agreed developer share into an earnings balance for you, net of the underlying compute cost and any platform fee. Those earnings accumulate over time, and on the payout schedule Monarch settles the balance to you via the chosen payout method, accompanied by a statement showing total user spend attributed to your app, the deductions (costs/fees/refunds if any), and the final amount paid out.
Usual Approach
Subscriptions work well in some markets, but they create a mismatch when users prefer small payments and when AI costs vary with usage. The Revenue Program aligns payment with consumption. A user can top up a small amount, use AI when they need it, and stop when they’re done. That reduces commitment friction. It also reduces refund fights and “I forgot to cancel” resentment, because the model is pay-as-you-go by design.
For developers, the difference is even more direct: you don’t carry the same financial exposure. In the typical model, success can be dangerous because usage rises faster than revenue. In the Revenue Program model, success increases both usage and revenue together, because the user must have balance to consume.
Free Sandbox
You can start in a free sandbox to integrate and test your workflows end-to-end, so you’re not paying just to experiment, iterate, and get your product working. If you outgrow the sandbox during development, you can top up a small balance for additional testing, but the default is simple: you can build and validate your integration without needing capital up front.
Once you’re in production, the model stays just as clean. Your end users fund usage directly by topping up prepaid credits, and AI consumption is metered and deducted as they use features inside your product. That means you’re not fronting variable inference costs and hoping to recover them later through subscriptions or invoices. Usage can’t run ahead of payment, because the wallet balance is the governor.
The result is a practical monetization path from day one: you can ship AI features with confidence, your users pay in small increments when they need value, and you earn revenue as usage happens, without the usual fear of surprise bills or complex billing systems.
The User Experience
To support prepaid usage at the user level, Monarch provides the identity and billing layer behind the Revenue Program. Each end user is connected under a Monarch ID, with a wallet balance that is updated through top-ups and deducted as AI features are used inside developer products.
Every AI action is metered and recorded as a transaction, so balance, usage, and receipts are consistent and auditable. This means developers don’t need to build their own wallet, billing ledger, or reconciliation system; Monarch handles user balance tracking, usage-based debits, and the underlying accounting required to make pay-as-you-go AI work reliably at scale.
For an end user, the experience is straightforward:
They see a balance.
They top up what they want.
They use AI features inside the apps they already like.
The cost is visible, and the spend is incremental. When they run out, they top up again via mobile money or card. This keeps the user in control and makes AI feel like a normal utility rather than a premium product that requires a big monthly commitment.
Over time, this changes how people relate to AI. It becomes something you use casually and frequently, in small amounts, across many contexts—work, school, small business, content creation—without needing to “subscribe to an AI app.” You pay for what you use.
Getting Access
The Revenue Program is for developers building AI-enabled products for African users who want a monetization model that fits prepaid behavior and avoids unpredictable billing risk. If you’re building for SMEs, education, creators, customer support, logistics, research workflows, or any product where AI creates direct day-to-day value, this model can fit naturally.
To get started, begin with Activation.
Activation connects your product to our infrastructure, verifies you can run a first workload end-to-end, and confirms usage metering is working. Once you’re activated, you can opt into the Revenue Program so your users can top up prepaid credits and pay per use inside your app.
The Revenue Program is currently available in Kenya, with support for M-Pesa, Airtel Money, and card payments. Additional regions will come online as rollout expands.
