Topping Up the AI Wallet: Currency, Credits, and the Two History Views

The AI wallet is the smallest financial surface on Labelix, and the one you touch most often: every craft-effect image, try-on, and showcase video draws from it. This guide covers the mechanics around the balance itself — how topping up works, what the wallet can and cannot pay for, and how to read the two history views when you want to reconcile a charge.

What a single generation costs, and how charges are recorded per generation, is covered in Balance, Credits, and the AI Usage Record; this article is about the money side.

What the wallet pays for — and what it never pays for

The cash balance has exactly one job: AI image and video generation. It cannot pay for orders, shipping, or consultation fees. Goods are always paid through checkout with a regular payment method, and the Free Customization consultation fee is charged at submission — never deducted from your wallet cash.

Alongside cash, your Balance page shows complimentary benefits: free image generations, free video generations, and free consultations. These are used automatically before wallet funds or consultation fees apply, so you never need to choose — a generation only touches cash once the matching free counter is empty.

Topping up

Press Recharge on the Balance page (the same dialog also appears in the workbench when a generation needs more funds than you have). You pick a quick amount — 20, 50, 100, or 200 in your display currency — or enter a custom amount.

Two currency facts are worth understanding before you pay:

• You are charged in your display currency, but the wallet is credited in USD. The dialog shows both sides, converted at the live rate, so what lands in the wallet is explicit before you confirm.
• The payment method is chosen on the payment page, exactly like an order payment. If the method you pick carries a surcharge, it is shown there before you commit.

If you started the top-up from inside the workbench, finishing the payment returns you to the step you left, so an interrupted generation continues where it stopped.

Reading the two history tabs

The Balance page splits history into two views for two different questions:

• Wallet activity answers "where did my balance go?" It is the complete ledger — every entry typed as Signup Bonus, Top-up, Image Charge, Video Charge, Consultation Charge, Refund, or Adjustment, with the balance after each entry. Charges that produced an image or video show a thumbnail of the asset, so a line item is never a mystery number.
• Recharge history answers "what did I pay in?" It filters to your top-ups and their refunds, and shows the amount you originally paid in your own currency alongside the USD credited.

One design decision explains most confusion here: a top-up only appears in history once the payment settles. An in-flight payment is not a ledger row; instead, the page shows a status banner for your latest recharge — Completed, Incomplete, Failed, Cancelled, or Refunded. If you paid seconds ago and the list looks unchanged, check the banner, not the table.

When something looks wrong

A generation that failed after charging, a top-up stuck in Incomplete, a refund you expected — the ledger plus the banner usually explains the state, and When an AI Generation Fails covers the recovery rules in detail. The short version: charges settle against delivered results, refunds land back as ledger entries you can see, and nothing disappears silently. If the records still do not add up, contact support with the ledger entry's timestamp — every entry is traceable on our side.