OC Me · Paying your users

Signing people in is free. Paying them is your choice. A project can pay its users always, only in promos with a start and an end, or never. Plenty of apps use orangecheck only to sign people in and keep bots out, and pay nobody.

What decides it is the project's pay periods: stretches of time in which its events earn its users sats. Outside every period an event earns nothing, costs nothing, and leaves no record.

Set them on the project's overview at ochk.app or me.ochk.io, under Pay your users: turn paying on, stop it, schedule a promo, move a promo's end, or remove one that hasn't started. A new project asks once, at creation, and answers "not now" unless you say otherwise.

The rules

1. Periods are history. One that has started keeps its start forever. You can end it, or move its end, but not move or delete it. So every event that paid sits inside the period that paid it, for as long as the receipt exists.
2. Periods don't overlap. One running "until you turn it off" must be ended before another can be scheduled after it.
3. Starts are now or later, and nothing is scheduled more than 366 days ahead. A promo lasts at least a minute.
4. Your balance still decides. While a period runs, each event takes its fee from the balance you fund. An empty balance stops events as before (402 escrow_depleted), so fund it before a promo starts.

What the event API answers

Firing events from code that runs all the time is safe. Outside a period:

{
    "ok": true,
    "earned": false,
    "reason": "not_paying",
    "detail": "Acme pays its users from 2026-10-20T00:00:00Z. Nothing was recorded or charged.",
    "next_pay_period": {
        "id": "pp_…",
        "name": "Launch week",
        "starts_at": "2026-10-20T00:00:00Z",
        "ends_at": "2026-10-27T00:00:00Z"
    }
}

next_pay_period is null when nothing is scheduled. Inside a period the response is the recorded event with earned: true. A batch answers not_paying per event. An Idempotency-Key sent with an event that recorded nothing is released, so a retry is judged afresh when it arrives. Test fires from your dashboard record either way and say whether you are paying now.

import { oc } from '@orangecheck/me-client';

const res = await oc.event.fire({
    project_key: 'pk_live_yourcompany',
    subtype: 'account_creation',
    signingSecret: process.env.OC_SIGNING_SECRET,
    userAddress: didOc,
});
if (!res.earned) {
    // not paying now; res.next_pay_period says when paying starts, if scheduled
}

Requires @orangecheck/me-client 0.29 or later for the typed result.

Checking an earning against its period

GET https://me.ochk.io/api/integrator/config?project_key=… publishes the project's pay_periods, past ones included. Because started periods never change, anyone can check that a receipt was billed while the project was paying:

import { oc, payingAt } from '@orangecheck/me-client';

const { config, pay_periods } = await fetch(
    `https://me.ochk.io/api/integrator/config?project_key=${PROJECT_KEY}`
).then((r) => r.json());

payingAt(pay_periods, new Date()); // { paying, period } or { paying: false, next }
const result = oc.event.verify(envelope, config, undefined, {
    payPeriods: pay_periods,
});
// result.issues includes 'outside_pay_period' for an event billed outside every period

The response is cached for a few minutes, so compare against your own clock rather than trusting a "paying now" you read earlier. me.ochk.io runs the same check in its own audit.

Where people see it

The earn directory lists an app only while it is paying, and shows a promo's name and when it ends. People who use your app see their earnings as before; what they earned in a promo stays theirs after it ends. Pay periods decide whether an event pays; drop periods decide when a paid share becomes takeable. They work together.