Buying Credit
Credit is your organisation's prepaid balance. Every request your agents make draws it down, and when it runs out everything stops. This page covers how to see what you have left and how to buy more.
Credit and budgets are two halves of the same thing. Credit is the money in the account; budgets are the limits you place on who may spend it. See Setting & Monitoring Budgets for the limits side.
Checking your balance
Your available credit is in the header of every page, on the main site and in the Admin portal alike. It changes colour as it runs down:
| Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green | Healthy |
| Amber | Running low |
| Red | Exhausted. Agents are blocked until you top up |
In the Admin portal the amount also links to the Credit page, which shows the balance, the total ever granted, and every top-up you have made.
Every new organisation starts with $5,00 of free credit, individual and enterprise alike.
Who can buy credit
Only Organization administrators, because a top-up raises the organisation-wide balance rather than anything scoped to a single team.
If you signed up as an individual, this is you. Registering creates an organisation for you and makes you its administrator, so you can buy credit from the moment you sign up without setting anything up.
In a company account, business unit and team administrators cannot buy. They still see the balance, so they know where it stands, but the credit pill does nothing when they click it and no Top up button appears. See Overview & Admin Levels for how the levels work.
Buying credit
- Click the credit amount in the header, or + Top up in the Admin portal.
- Pick an amount. Each card shows what you will be charged in rand.
- Choose Pay. You are taken to Ozow to complete the payment.
- Pay from your bank account using instant EFT.
- Ozow returns you to the Credit page and your new balance is already there.
Amounts
Credit is priced in US dollars and charged in South African rand at R17,00 to the dollar. The rate shown when you buy is the rate you pay, and it is recorded against the purchase, so a later change never alters what you were charged.
| Credit | You pay |
|---|---|
| $10 | R170,00 |
| $25 | R425,00 |
| $50 | R850,00 |
| $100 | R1 700,00 |
| $500 | R8 500,00 |
| $1 000 | R17 000,00 |
| $5 000 | R85 000,00 |
| $10 000 | R170 000,00 |
There is no VAT line and no transaction fee. The rand figure on the card is the whole amount.
Paying
Payment is handled entirely by Ozow, a South African instant EFT gateway. You log in to your own bank through Ozow and approve the payment there. AETHER never sees your banking credentials.
The payment appears on your bank statement with a reference like AETHER-A1B2C3D4E5. The same
reference appears on the Credit page, so quote it if you ever need to ask us about a payment.
Note: credit is added only once your bank confirms the payment, not when you click Pay. That is usually a few seconds.
After paying
Credit is added automatically and a receipt is emailed to whoever made the purchase, showing the amount added, the amount paid and the new balance.
You do not need to stay on the page. If you close the tab or lose your connection mid-payment, the credit still lands: we confirm the outcome with Ozow independently, and a background check sweeps up anything that was missed within a few minutes. A payment can never be credited twice, however many times the bank or the browser reports it.
Reading the Credit page
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Date | When the top-up was started |
| Credit | The dollar amount bought |
| Paid | The rand amount charged |
| Status | See the table below |
| Reference | The reference on your bank statement |
| Ozow ID | Ozow's own transaction id, for support queries |
| Credited | When the credit was actually added |
Statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Complete | Paid and credited |
| Pending | Started, waiting on your bank. It will resolve on its own |
| Cancelled | You cancelled at the bank. Nothing was charged |
| Abandoned | The payment was left unfinished. Nothing was charged |
| Error | The payment could not be started or processed. Nothing was charged |
| Investigating | Something did not match and we are checking it by hand. No credit was added |
A Test badge marks payments made in test mode, where no money changes hands. You will not see these in normal use.
Only Complete adds credit. Every other status leaves your balance untouched.
Running out
Organisation credit is a hard stop. When it is exhausted, every agent in the organisation is refused until you top up, and developers see a message telling them to contact their administrator. Credit does not expire and does not reset each month: it sits there until it is spent.
Because the balance is checked before every request, topping up takes effect immediately. There is nothing to restart.
Tip: the header pill turns amber before you run out. Treat that as the signal to top up, rather than waiting for agents to start failing.
Next steps
- Setting & Monitoring Budgets: cap what each team, user or agent may spend.
- Cost Report: see where the credit actually went.
- Cost & Auditing: how coding agents draw on the same balance.