AI PAYMENT THREAT · AI AGENT OVERSPEND

Stop AI-agent overspend before payment

A model should never be able to reason its way around a user-approved spending cap.

Where the failure appears

Prices, quantities, taxes and fees can change after the user delegates a purchase. Natural-language instructions such as 'around $100' are unsafe unless converted into an explicit maximum.

Who needs the control

Any merchant, agent or payment platform allowing software to select products and execute purchases.

Execution-time response

  1. Record a numeric maximum and permitted currency.
  2. Send the final payable total to the pre-flight API.
  3. Block when the value exceeds the approved boundary.
  4. Return the exact variance in a machine-readable finding.

Relevant controls

Numeric maximum amountCurrency allowlistFinal-total comparisonFee-inclusive policyFail-closed parsingExact reason codes

What changes

The payment call never runs when the final total is outside the user's stated authority.

Reproduce the failure safely

Change a sample amount, seller, consent field or instruction and inspect the structured decision before integrating.

Test the threat free →