The Solana Foundation has announced the launch of native Subscriptions & Allowances on Solana mainnet, introducing a shared onchain program that enables recurring billing, delegated spending, subscription management, payroll automation, API billing, and stablecoin invoice collection.
The new infrastructure provides a standardized framework for recurring payments on Solana. Instead of relying on custom-built payment systems or centralized billing providers, developers can now integrate a single audited and open-source program that supports multiple payment models directly onchain.
The launch addresses a longstanding challenge for onchain applications. While traditional software companies have relied on subscriptions and recurring revenue models for decades, onchain applications have generally lacked equivalent infrastructure.
Three Payment Models in One Program
The Subscriptions & Allowances program supports three distinct authorization models designed for different use cases.
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Allowances: Allowances, also known as Fixed Delegation, allow users to pre-authorize spending up to a predefined cap. Users can also set optional expiration dates. This model enables delegated spending without requiring users to approve every transaction individually.
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Recurring Delegations: Recurring Delegations allow a delegate to pull up to a specified amount on a recurring schedule. The spending cap resets automatically according to the agreed cadence. Unlike merchant-controlled subscriptions, the user defines the payment terms. This makes the model suitable for payroll, contractor payments, and ongoing financial relationships managed directly onchain.
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Subscription Plans: Subscription Plans enable merchants to publish fixed pricing tiers onchain. Users subscribe to a specific plan, and merchants automatically collect payments according to the plan's billing schedule. Billing terms remain fixed once a user subscribes. If a merchant wants to change pricing, it must create a new subscription plan rather than modify existing agreements.
What Teams Can Build
The Solana Foundation says developers can use the new infrastructure to build a wide range of recurring payment applications without having to create custom payment systems from scratch.
Potential use cases include:
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Delegating spending authority to AI agents that operate within predefined budgets
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Automating contractor and employee payroll
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Supporting recurring API billing for infrastructure providers
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Enabling micropayment models for content and media platforms
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Automating stablecoin invoice collection for merchants and enterprises
According to the Foundation, integrations that previously required weeks of custom development and additional security audits can now be completed much more quickly through a shared payment primitive.
Solving a Longstanding Delegation Problem
The Subscriptions Delegation Program addresses an existing limitation in Solana's token authorization system. Traditionally, a Solana token account can approve only one delegated authority at a time. This restriction makes it difficult for users to maintain several spending arrangements simultaneously, such as a monthly subscription, a spending allowance for an AI agent, and a merchant billing agreement.
The new program introduces a program-controlled Subscription Authority for each user and token mint pair. A user approves that authority once, and the program then validates every transfer request against separate authorization records that define who can pull funds, how much they can pull, and when the authorization expires or resets.
Importantly, the Subscription Authority cannot move funds on its own. Every transfer must satisfy the conditions of an active authorization before execution.
Superteam USA Lead and Layer 33 Founder Nicky Scanz argued that subscription-based revenue has long powered successful software businesses, while blockchain applications have lacked comparable functionality. "TradFi software companies discovered quite a long time ago that the subscription model absolutely works. Especially if you're a company that requires having lots of users versus individual whales. Us not having this parity onchain is a huge net negative, and now it's here. So if you want to build a $100 million startup on Solana using subscriptions & allowances, now's your time."
A New Primitive for Onchain Commerce
The program supports tokens created with both the SPL Token and Token-2022 frameworks. The Solana Foundation describes Subscriptions & Allowances as shared infrastructure designed for ecosystem-wide adoption. The program is open source, deployed on mainnet, and audited by Cantina and Spearbit.
The launch of native Subscriptions & Allowances represents an effort to bring one of the internet's most common business models directly onto Solana. As adoption expands through integrations from companies such as Dynamic, Helius, and Confirmo, the program could become a foundational component for a new generation of onchain applications that depend on recurring payments and automated financial relationships.
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