Topping up with Stripe — what happens between Pay and Balance Updated

Nodetonet runs on prepaid service credit — there is no monthly subscription and no minimum commitment. You add credit when you need it, spend it as your proxies and tunnels run, and top up again when the balance gets low. Payment is handled entirely by Stripe on a hosted checkout page; Nodetonet never touches your card number. This guide walks every step of a successful top-up, explains what happens under the hood between the moment you click Pay and the moment your balance updates, and tells you exactly what to do when something goes wrong.

TL;DR: Click a package on /balance, complete the Stripe-hosted form, wait up to 5 seconds for the webhook to credit your account, then refresh if the toast does not appear. For any lingering issue, open a ticket with your Stripe receipt and we can replay the webhook from our dashboard.

Why prepaid credit? Quick recap

Nodetonet's billing model is deliberately simple: there are no recurring charges, no tier fees, and idle proxies cost nothing. You buy credit upfront, it sits in your account, and the platform only deducts it when a proxy or tunnel is actually serving traffic. This means you can register, pair a phone, and leave the panel alone for a month without being billed. Read how pay-as-you-go pricing works for the full breakdown, or check understanding your bills to see exactly what each line item covers.

Step 1 — Pick a package on the Balance page

Navigate to /balance. You will see credit packages laid out as cards. Each card shows the dollar amount you pay and the credit you receive:

Click the card you want — it highlights to confirm your selection — then press Pay with Card at the bottom of the page. If you are running proxies through a reseller account, the same top-up flow applies; credit pools stay within your own account. For reseller-specific billing, see reseller and white-label setup.

Step 2 — The Stripe-hosted checkout

Clicking Pay redirects you to checkout.stripe.com. The URL change is intentional and correct — you are now on Stripe's servers, not ours. Nodetonet never receives, stores or even glimpses your card details; Stripe returns only a payment confirmation token after the charge succeeds.

On the Stripe page you enter:

• Card number, expiry date, CVC
• Cardholder name
• Billing country (used for VAT calculation in EU and eligible regions)
• Postal code or full billing address if your card issuer requires it

If your bank requires 3-D Secure (3DS) / Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) — common in the EU and UK — you will see an in-page challenge: a six-digit SMS OTP or an approval tap in your banking app. That step happens entirely between Stripe and your bank. Nodetonet never sees the OTP or the challenge result; we only learn that the overall payment succeeded or failed.

Step 3 — The return redirect

On a successful charge Stripe redirects you back to /balance?status=success. The page renders a blue info banner reading "Payment received — balance updating."

Do not refresh repeatedly at this point. The banner does not mean your balance is delayed — it means the credit is on its way via webhook, which takes 1–5 seconds under normal conditions. Refreshing many times in quick succession can make the toast appear to flash and disappear, which is a visual glitch, not a billing problem.

Step 4 — The webhook credit (what happens behind the scenes)

As soon as Stripe confirms the charge, it fires a checkout.session.completed event to our backend endpoint. Our handler processes it in a single atomic sequence:

1. Signature validation — the webhook payload is verified against our Stripe webhook secret so we know it came from Stripe and was not tampered with.
2. Package resolution — the session metadata contains the package ID; we look it up and determine the exact credit amount, including the $100-tier bonus.
3. Database write — a row is inserted into billing_transactions and your account's balance field is incremented in the same database transaction, so the two are always consistent.
4. Real-time push — the panel emits a WebSocket event to your open session so the balance counter updates without a manual refresh.

When the push arrives, the blue "updating" banner automatically swaps to a green Balance updated toast showing the new balance. The entire sequence typically completes well under five seconds.

If the toast has not appeared after one minute, do a single hard-refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R / Cmd+Shift+R). If the balance is still unchanged, open a support ticket with your Stripe receipt attached. We can locate the checkout.session.completed event in our Stripe dashboard and replay the webhook manually — your credit will arrive without you needing to pay again.

Step 5 — What can go wrong and what to do

• Card declined. Stripe shows an inline error message on its own page; your card is not charged. Try a different card or contact your card issuer. If you are using a prepaid or virtual card, check that it supports international/online charges.
• 3DS challenge abandoned. If you close the SCA popup without approving, Stripe redirects you to /balance?status=cancel. No charge was made. Simply re-select the package and go through checkout again; your session and any running proxies are unaffected.
• Network drop during redirect. The charge went through on Stripe's end even if your browser never landed on /balance?status=success. The webhook fires independently — wait 30 seconds and refresh /balance. Your credit will be there.
• Webhook delay (rare). During Stripe infrastructure incidents, webhook delivery can take longer than usual. Your balance will update as soon as the event is delivered; no action is needed from you. You can monitor Stripe's status at status.stripe.com.
• Balance updated but proxies still paused. If a proxy was suspended due to a zero balance, it resumes automatically once the credit posts. If it does not resume within a minute, open the device in the panel and check the status manually. See device health — what "online" means for troubleshooting device state.

Step 6 — Receipts, transaction history, and billing records

Stripe emails an itemised receipt to the address on your account immediately after a successful charge. On the Nodetonet side, every top-up appears under /balance with the package name, the credit amount (bonus included), the timestamp, and a link back to the original Stripe receipt. That record is useful for expense reporting and VAT documentation.

If you need to export billing data for accounting purposes, each row in the history table links back to the Stripe invoice, which can be downloaded as a PDF directly from Stripe. For a detailed explanation of every field in a billing transaction, see understanding your bills.

Keeping your balance healthy

A few practical habits help you avoid service interruptions:

• Top up before the balance approaches zero — a near-empty balance can cause brief proxy pauses during heavy-traffic periods if multiple deductions arrive at once.
• If you manage proxies for clients, see per-customer proxy clients and quota limits per client — you can set per-client spending caps so one heavy user does not drain shared credit unexpectedly.
• Use the token groups system to organise devices into pools; the panel's group view gives an at-a-glance credit burn rate per group.

Questions about your payment?

We are reachable at support@nodetonet.com and on Discord at discord.gg/nodetonet. When you write in about a payment, attach the Stripe receipt (it has a unique receipt number we can search for directly) and we will resolve it promptly.

Ready to top up? Head to /balance and pick your package, or create an account if you have not already. Once your balance is set you can install the Android agent, pair a phone, and have a mobile proxy running in under ten minutes.