The deal highlights how AI and usage-based pricing are reshaping the systems businesses rely on to bill and collect revenue.
The Dutch payments company announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire San Francisco-based Orb, a billing platform used by technology firms including Vercel, Glean, Replit and Supabase. The transaction is expected to close in July, subject to customary approvals.
Why billing is becoming a fintech priority
While payments and billing have traditionally operated as separate functions, the rise of AI services and consumption-based software pricing is creating pressure for tighter integration between the two.
Many technology companies are moving away from fixed subscription fees and toward models based on actual usage. Whether customers are paying for API calls, compute resources or AI-generated outputs, these approaches require systems capable of processing large volumes of data in real time and translating them into accurate invoices.
Orb was built to address that challenge. Founded in 2021, the company specialises in tracking and storing detailed usage events before they are converted into customer charges.
This architecture allows businesses to test different pricing structures, model customer behaviour and adjust monetisation strategies without rebuilding core systems.
Connecting billing and payments
Adyen argues that combining billing data with payment performance information could help merchants improve transaction success rates, reduce failed payments and gain better visibility into revenue generation.
Billing systems contain information about what customers are being charged for, while payment platforms provide insight into whether those charges are successfully collected. Bringing those datasets together could create new opportunities for automation and optimisation.
Commenting on the deal, Adyen Co-CEO, Ingo Uytdehaage, said: “The structural complexity of modern billing has become the kind of infrastructure problem Adyen is built to take on.”
A broader infrastructure trend
Adyen said Orb will initially continue operating under an incubator model, allowing the company to maintain product development momentum and continue supporting merchants that use multiple payment providers.
As AI adoption accelerates and usage-based pricing becomes more common, billing infrastructure is emerging as a strategic area of investment across the fintech sector.
For payments companies, the next competitive battleground may not be payments alone, but the broader systems that determine how revenue is calculated, collected and optimised.
