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Streaming Payments

Enable continuous, per-second billing for compute, bandwidth, and content delivery.
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Use streaming payments on Radius to charge continuously based on real usage, with instant settlement and predictable costs.

Problem statement

Traditional billing models create friction for both service providers and consumers:

  • Upfront payment risk: Users pre-pay without knowing exact consumption, risking overpayment and fund lockup
  • Invoice-based delays: Providers wait days or weeks to get paid, exposing themselves to default risk
  • Coarse billing granularity: Services charge by month or hour, forcing users to pay for unused capacity

Radius solves this with continuous micropayments—pay-as-you-consume settlement at second-level granularity, eliminating both payment and credit risk entirely.

How it works

Streaming payments establish an ongoing payment loop between client and server:

  1. Client initiates a session with the server, providing an account with available funds
  2. Payments flow at regular intervals (every second, every minute) based on service consumption
  3. Service continues uninterrupted as long as payments arrive on schedule
  4. Either party can terminate anytime—the client stops payments, or the server stops service

This creates a natural "circuit breaker": if the client runs out of funds or the server detects payment failure, service halts immediately.

Benefits

Streaming payments unlock several key advantages:

BenefitImpact
No overpaymentPay only for what you consume, down to the second
No credit riskReal-time settlement eliminates provider default risk
Granular billingPer-second pricing enables precise cost-matching
Instant terminationService stops immediately on payment failure
Predictable costsLinear per-unit pricing with no hidden fees
Improved UXUsers pay gradually instead of upfront

Use cases

Streaming payments are ideal for:

Cloud compute

Pay-per-second VMs and container instances
  • Traditional: Monthly subscriptions for over-provisioned capacity
  • Streaming: Micro-VM charges by the second, scale up/down instantly
  • Example: 0.01 USD per second per vCPU

Video/content streaming

Pay-per-minute or per-gigabyte
  • Traditional: Tiered monthly plans with bandwidth caps
  • Streaming: Continuous payment as bytes flow, no caps or surprises
  • Example: 0.01 USD per MB of video data

WiFi and network access

Pay-per-minute connectivity
  • Traditional: 24-hour passes or monthly contracts
  • Streaming: Micropayments per minute of active connection
  • Example: 0.01 USD per minute of active connection

AI inference and APIs

Pay-per-token or per-request
  • Traditional: Throttled APIs with prepaid tokens
  • Streaming: Continuous settlement as tokens are generated
  • Example: 0.01 USD per 1,000 tokens generated

Network configuration

Radius Testnet:
  • RPC Endpoint: https://rpc.testnet.radiustech.xyz
  • Chain ID: 72344
  • Native Token: RUSD
  • Block time: ~2-3 seconds

What's next?

Learn more about building on Radius: