I had exactly the same issue with Anthropic API. It was only $15, but I was so annoyed when they just decided that they'll take my money for free. If it's really the law as some people state, it's a stupid law.
replyI think my Zalando gift cards expire after 4 years.
Fal.ai does the same thing.
replyIt's pretty much a universal API credit policy at this point. I'm not sure if this legitimately escapes the prepaid gift card requirements or if the providers see nuance where there might not be any.
it makes it hard to think their "safe ai" will ever be human friendly. itll match their company ethos of theft and lack of empathy for the people interacting with it.
replyEverybody does that, the only question is how much time they give you. The issue, as far as I remember hearing, is that in the US expiring company credit can be immediately recorded as income, whereas indefinite-term credit only becomes income once the user spends it.
replyNot true of non-US companies. I had also added money to Deepseek, and it was still there (and Z.ai and Moonshot are the same). I'm reasonable though, if it's been 5 years or something I might have understood, but it was 1 year and the account was in use during that time.
replyWhere I live (in Canada) it's actually illegal for gift cards to ever expire, and there's lots available from US companies, so if it's an accounting issue other companies have figured it out.
I put $20 on Mistral and Deepinfra several years ago, and it’s still there.
replyGift cards generally cannot expire until 5 years after activation in the United States (CARD Act 2009), so I would have wanted a similar time period here at least.
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