Fast IU top-up

What it is

The fast top-up modal is the quick way to add Intelligence Units (IUs) without leaving whatever you're doing. Instead of navigating to a billing page, it opens as an overlay on top of your current screen, titled "Top up Intelligence Units," and for a member with a card already on file, a purchase completes in about one to two seconds: pick a bundle, click buy, and the charge goes through against your saved card right there. No checkout redirect, no new tab.

This is a different mechanism from the full Billing page. /account/billing (see Account & Billing: Intelligence Units) always sends you to a Stripe Checkout session, deliberately, with a balance breakdown and auto-top-up settings alongside it. The fast top-up modal skips that detour for members who already have a payment method saved: it charges off-session in the background and shows you the result in the same window. If you've never bought IUs before and have no saved card, the modal falls through to an embedded card form so you can complete a purchase and save your card at the same time, still without leaving the page.

Verinode never charges you without a click here. Every purchase, instant or embedded, starts with you choosing a bundle and pressing Buy or Subscribe. Nothing in this modal fires automatically.

Where to find it

There isn't one fixed page for this modal, it's built to open from any "add IUs" control across the app. Today, three real places open it:

• Account → Membership → Credits. In Settings, open the Membership tab, then the Add Capacity panel (reached by clicking through from the Credits area). Its Add Intelligence Units button opens the modal on the default 1,000 IU bundle.
• The Capacity quick-top-up tiles. If you're on a paid tier and your balance is loaded, the Membership tab shows a Capacity panel captioned "One tap. Charges your card on file." with four tiles, 250 / 1,000 / 5,000 / 20,000 IU, each showing its decision-equivalent and price. Clicking any tile opens the modal pre-selected on that exact size.
• The IU activity ledger. Wherever your IU spend history is shown as a ledger overlay, its footer reads "IU never expire while your membership stays active" next to an Add capacity button, which opens the same modal.

Wherever it opens from, you land in the same place: a title reading "Top up Intelligence Units" with a Cancel button and a primary buy button in the footer.

The selection screen

When the modal opens, it shows:

• Your balance line, above the bundle grid: "You have [X] IU, about [Y] decisions or [Z] conversations. Add more to keep IQ working." This uses the same decisions-and-conversations translation used everywhere else in Verinode, IUs are shown against outcomes, not as a raw compute meter. If your balance hasn't loaded, it falls back to a plain "Add Intelligence Units to keep IQ working."
• A currency toggle, top right: USD / CAD. Whichever is active is highlighted. Switching it re-prices every tile on the screen immediately; it doesn't change what you're actually billed in until you confirm a purchase.
• A cadence toggle: One-time / Monthly. This decides whether you're buying a single prepaid bundle or starting a standing monthly subscription. Both your currency and cadence choice stick around if you close the modal and reopen it later in the same session, they only reset if you refresh the page.
• Four bundle tiles: 250, 1,000, 5,000, and 20,000 IU. Each tile shows:

- The IU count, in bold, with "IU" beneath it. - An exchange-rate line, "≈ N decisions" on one line and "or M conversations" on the next. These are alternates, not additive, a 1,000 IU bundle is about 33 decisions or about 333 conversations on its own, not both at once. A "decision" here means one standard AI decision run (roughly 30 IU); a "conversation" means one chat turn with your Co-COO (roughly 3 IU). - The price in your selected currency, with "/ mo" appended when Monthly is selected. - A copper border and tint when the tile is the one currently selected.

The footer button reads "Buy [N] IU · $[price]" in one-time mode, or "Subscribe · $[price]/mo" in monthly mode, and updates live as you switch tiles or currency.

Here's what each bundle costs, at the current pricing:

| Bundle | One-time (USD / CAD) | Monthly (USD / CAD) | ≈ decisions | ≈ conversations | |---|---|---|---|---| | 250 IU | $65 / $90 | $55 / $75 per month | 8 | 83 | | 1,000 IU | $230 / $320 | $200 / $280 per month | 33 | 333 | | 5,000 IU | $1,000 / $1,400 | $850 / $1,190 per month | 166 | 1,666 | | 20,000 IU | $3,500 / $4,900 | $3,000 / $4,200 per month | 666 | 6,666 |

The monthly price at every size is lower than the matching one-time price, that's the standing-commitment discount: subscribing costs less per IU than buying the same amount once. For the full breakdown of when to use a bundle versus a subscription versus pay-as-you-go, see Buying Intelligence Units: bundles vs recurring.

What happens when you click Buy or Subscribe

What happens next depends on your cadence and whether you have a card on file.

1. 1Monthly is selected. The modal always opens an embedded card-and-checkout form inside itself, whether or not you already have a saved card. A monthly IU subscription needs a full Stripe subscription set up, so this path never uses the instant off-session charge. The prompt reads "Set up your monthly Intelligence Units."
2. 2One-time is selected, and you have a card on file. The screen switches to a short processing view: "Charging your card on file…" / "This takes a second." Verinode charges your saved payment method off-session, in the background, no page reload. Most of the time this resolves in one to two seconds.
3. 3One-time is selected, and you have no saved card. The instant charge attempt reports back that a card is needed, and the modal falls through to the same embedded form used for monthly, with the prompt "Add a card to complete your top-up. We save it so next time is one tap." Completing this purchase both charges you and saves the card, so every top-up after this one uses step 2 instead.
4. 4Your card needs extra bank authentication. Occasionally a card issuer requires additional verification (3-D Secure) even for an off-session charge. When that happens, Verinode opens Stripe's secure card-confirmation step right inside the modal, no redirect to another site, and continues automatically once you clear it.

The embedded form (steps 1 and 3) renders directly inside the modal, in a rounded panel, it's Stripe's own hosted card element loaded in place, not a new tab. A Back button underneath returns you to the selection screen without losing your chosen size, currency, or cadence.

Success

Once a charge or subscription setup completes, the modal shows a green checkmark and one of:

• Monthly: "Monthly Intelligence Units are on."
• One-time, amount known: "[N] IU added," for example, "1,000 IU added."
• One-time, amount not resolved: a generic "Intelligence Units added."

Underneath, it reads "Your balance updates in a moment." That's not filler: the actual credit happens through a Stripe webhook that lands a moment after the charge succeeds, so the modal quietly refreshes your balance in the background for a short while (checking again every couple of seconds, for under 15 seconds total) rather than showing you a stale number. If you close the modal before that finishes, your balance still updates, you just won't watch it happen live. The single button here, Back to IQ, closes the modal and resets it back to the selection screen for next time.

If it doesn't go through

The error screen reads "That didn't go through," followed by the specific reason where Verinode has one (a declined card, a failed authentication, a payments outage) or a plain "Please try again" when it doesn't, plus a note that you can reach support@verinode.ai. Two buttons: Close, which dismisses the modal, and Try again, which returns you to the selection screen with your bundle, currency, and cadence exactly as you left them so you don't have to reselect anything.

Best-practice example

Say you're mid-decision in the workspace and a low-balance note tells you IUs are running short before your Co-COO can finish a plan. Rather than dropping out of the decision to go find the billing page, you click the nearest Add IUs control. The modal opens already knowing you're a paid member with a saved card, so you pick the 1,000 IU tile, confirm you want about 33 more decisions of headroom, and click Buy. The charge clears in about a second, the success screen confirms "1,000 IU added," and you click Back to IQ to return to exactly the decision you were working. Your balance catches up within the next few seconds, without a page reload.

Data sources