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Usage-based billing for software: Why Adyen acquired Orb
We completed our acquisition of Orb on 1 July. Here’s why UK software and AI businesses moving to usage-based pricing need billing and payments working as one.
Adyen has always concentrated on the hardest problems in payments, so that our merchants can concentrate on building good products.
Over the past few years, a pattern has emerged. Speaking with fast-growing AI companies and enterprise software firms, we kept hearing the same thing: software is no longer sold the way it used to be, and the billing and payments infrastructure behind it hasn’t kept pace. For UK businesses moving from per-seat licences to charging by usage, the gap shows up in the month-end close and on customers’ invoices.
So when the chance came, we took it. We announced in June that we would acquire Orb, a usage-based billing platform, and the deal completed on 1 July.
From boxed software to pay-per-use: how software monetisation has changed
In the early days of software, commerce was simple. You bought a physical disk off a store shelf for a one-time fee. Once you bought it, you owned the tool forever. But it meant revenue was capped, which made consistently investing in innovation difficult.
Then came the Access Era, driven by the rise of SaaS, where companies moved to seat-based, fixed subscriptions. This was an "all-you-can-eat" model popularised by traditional software platforms and streaming services.
Today, we’ve entered the Value Era. Due to the rise of AI, API-driven services, and cloud compute, software value is no longer tied to simple seat counts. Instead, it’s tied directly to consumption.
Unlike traditional SaaS, where the marginal cost to serve an extra user was nearly zero, AI models and modern APIs carry significant, variable compute and token costs. This has fundamentally changed how the underlying expenses work for software companies, and it means charging a flat monthly fee per user simply does not scale.
To protect margins and capture true value, modern software companies are rapidly adopting usage-based, credit-driven, and outcome-oriented pricing models. This shift is happening on two fronts: at hyper-growth AI-native startups building from scratch, and in established enterprise teams launching consumption-priced AI products inside businesses that still bill by seat.
Why usage-based pricing needs billing infrastructure built for it
Plenty of businesses bill by seat, by month, and will continue to do so for a long time. That billing model is well-served today, including by partners we work with closely. But our bet is that the fastest-growing segment of software is moving to consumption, and that segment is currently underserved.
When software companies try to shift to flexible, consumption-based monetisation using homegrown tools or billing systems designed for seat-based subscriptions, it leads to innovation bottlenecks:
Engineering and product delays: Product teams hesitate to roll out breakthrough AI features because internal tools cannot reliably track or meter token usage.
Operational bottlenecks: Finance teams spend days every month buried in manual spreadsheet reconciliation and custom formulas per customer.
Customer friction: Forcing new pricing models onto rigid legacy rails leads to billing disputes, unpredictable invoices, and revenue cannibalisation.
Meet Orb: billing built for usage-based software and AI
That brings me to Orb.
Orb is a product-connected billing platform purpose-built for usage, hybrid, and outcome-based monetisation models. Rather than forcing businesses into static subscription tiers, Orb gives engineering, product, and finance teams the flexibility to monetise any dimension of their product, whether that is compute cycles, tokens, API calls, or custom seats.
Orb’s platform is designed for enterprises and already processes trillions of usage data points per month for some of the world's fastest-growing AI and SaaS pioneers. What makes Orb truly unique is its ability to run Orb Simulations, which allow companies to backtest new pricing strategies against real historical usage data before going live.
By bringing Adyen's payments data into the fold, we can take this even further. While Orb simulates what you would invoice today, our joint platform will simulate what you will actually collect and what it costs to collect it. That is a capability nobody else in the market can build.
A note from Alvaro Morales, CEO & Co-Founder of Orb:
"When we started Orb, our mission was to make sure billing never got in the way of product innovation. Joining Adyen allows us to bring next-generation billing infrastructure to the world’s leading enterprises. By uniting real-time usage data with global payment rails, we are giving software companies the power to monetise seamlessly at scale."
Why a payments company acquired a billing platform
Because billing and payments belong together.
Companies do not overhaul their billing infrastructure just for better internal dashboards. They do it to drive revenue, accelerate cash flow, and deliver a frictionless financial experience to their customers.
That value exchange breaks down when there is a disconnect between the system calculating the cost and the system collecting the revenue. If a business has to constantly reconcile fragmented usage data with external payment gateways, the natural flow of commerce is interrupted.
Consider an enterprise software company adding a generative AI assistant to their platform. Their core business runs on seat subscriptions, but every prompt costs them real money. Rather than overhauling their entire core billing system, they plug in Orb to meter AI token usage and manage prepaid credit pools. The moment a user’s credits run low, Orb triggers an automated payment through Adyen’s global payment rails to top up the balance without interrupting the user's workflow.
When billing and payments operate as a single, unified flow, the impact is immediate and measurable:
Automated threshold billing: By connecting Orb’s rich usage data directly with Adyen’s global payment rails, businesses can automate complex triggers, such as executing a payment the exact moment a customer reaches a usage limit or exhausts a credit pool.
Proactive revenue protection: Marrying usage patterns with payment identity data helps stop fraudsters from abusing free trials and boosts payment authorisation rates, all while keeping the experience seamless for legitimate users.
Expanded margin opportunities: Combining usage-based billing with Adyen’s payment infrastructure unlocks new efficiency across payment methods. For example, high-value B2B ACH transactions can be transformed into margin drivers when paired with automated usage tracking.
What happens next for Adyen and Orb
As AI continues to push the boundaries of software, your financial infrastructure must evolve at the exact same pace. You'll soon see how we bring this unified Adyen and Orb experience to life across our platform.
If there is one idea worth sitting with, it's this: the next era of software innovation begins when monetisation is an effortless, automated flow that turns every ounce of product usage directly into growth.
