I cannot purchase prepay credits for the Gemini API. Every attempt is
rejected, so my prepay balance stays at $0.00 and the API is completely
blocked.
## What happens
On the AI Studio Billing page, “Buy credits” opens, but completing the
purchase always fails with:
“An unexpected error has occurred. Please try again later. [OR-RWE-03]”
A NEW reference ID is generated on every attempt, so each try is reaching
your systems as a separate transaction and being rejected consistently.
Reference IDs:
8280897a0fbb5566
3fc3cb197e47a1bc
My card has never been charged. Only a GBP 0.00 verification
authorisation goes through, so the card is reachable and the details are
valid — it is the actual purchase that is declined.
## Account
- Billing account: Paid, Tier 1, $250 Billing Account Tier Cap
- Project: gen-lang-client-0319305.. (Default Gemini Project)
- Prepay credit balance: $0.00
## API state
The API key itself is valid. Listing models succeeds:
GET https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models
→ HTTP 200, 50 models returned, including gemini-3.8-flash
But any generation request is rejected:
POST …/models/gemini-3.8-flash:generateContent
→ HTTP 402
status: RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED
message: "Your prepayment credits are depleted. Please go to AI
Studio at https://ai.studio/projects to manage your project and
billing."
So the key and project are configured correctly. The only blocker is that
credits cannot be added.
## Already tried
- Repeated purchase attempts (each returns OR-RWE-03 with a new reference)
- A different card from a different bank — same result
- Incognito window, single Google account signed in, extensions disabled
- Confirmed the card is valid, funds available, and never charged
- The support form triaged my case out with: "Based on your answers, our
support specialists won’t be able to help you fix this problem."
## Request
Could someone from the team check why the credit purchase is being
declined on this billing account? If there is a risk/review flag on the
payments profile, please tell me what verification is needed. If the
purchases did register on your side, a manual billing sync would resolve
it.