I think this is a big step in the right direction for Stripe (unclear pricing aside). We’ve been thinking about usage based billing for a long time now. We built a bunch of apps using Stripe and found there was a lot missing if you wanted to track activity and bill for it, as well as with reporting and revenue optimization. Having not dug into the platform too far, this definitely looks like it could fill some gaps.
I will say I’m not a fan of taking a percentage for billing on top of taking a percentage on payments, though. There is risk involved for payments (chargebacks, fraud, etc), but billing is transactional. A percent there feels like a money grab to me.
The only other problem I see with this is that it all seems a bit convoluted. I get that it has to be tacked on to their existing platform. But we’ve found that the secret to an awesome usage based billing system was to track activity in real time, then apply automated billing to that tracked activity. It’s a different approach and we’re working on polishing that up and bringing it to market over the next few months.
Would love to hear more about how folks are thinking about consumption and usage based billing and pricing. I think it’s the next big wave in Internet monetization, so it’s important to get right.