Top up

£5 of reading, paid on Stripe's page. You come back to a page that adds the credit to the balance in this browser. No account, and no subscription: it is one payment, and nothing renews.

Kept in this browser, and only here. The balance, the history and the receipts are in this browser's storage; nothing is sent anywhere and there is no account. A new browser, a private window or clearing site data starts again with £5.00 and no history, so with no personalisation. It never blocks a page and it never nags: credit can go below zero, the balance says so in the top bar, and that is all. How the meter works, and why we run it this way.

The page you come back to cannot check the payment (this site has no server to check it with), so it adds the credit once for each payment reference it is given. That is a known gap and it is written down, with why it is accepted, in who will game the reading meter.