Where the term appears ## Where the term appears in this channel's material Non-payment abuse shows up in the channel's exploration of how fraud is changing as agents become new economic actors. In the Stripe conversation with Emily Glassberg Sands, the point is that fraudsters are shifting away from traditional payment-based attacks — stealing card numbers, abusing checkout — and toward exploiting resources that don't involve a payment at all. [moment: 240] One concrete example from the evidence: fraudsters now target compute — notably, they steal free-trial credits rather than card numbers. One large AI company saw only 4% of free trials convert, each trial costing $25 in LLM spend — $625 per payer — with most trial users being abusers. [moment: 374] [moment: 240] ## Why it matters Non-payment abuse is part of a broader rethinking of fraud: because the internet economy assumed a person was the main actor, and agents are now a new class of actor, every layer of the stack — including fraud defense — is being rebuilt. The material frames defenses as moving up-funnel: fraud is a full-funnel, customer-lifecycle problem, integrated at sign-up, not just at checkout. [moment: 619] - Non-payment abuse = fraud that exploits resources without a payment event, e.g. harvesting free-trial credits to consume compute. - It replaces payment-focused fraud as agents become new economic actors targeting compute rather than card numbers. - The channel ties defenses to full-funnel, sign-up-integrated fraud detection rather than checkout-only checks.