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. Register an immutable numeric maximum, permitted currency and optional cumulative budgets.
  2. Submit the signed final payable total through strict verification.
  3. Block an over-limit result; otherwise atomically reserve cumulative headroom.
  4. Require provider-bound consumption and one fresh permit redemption before submission; keep an uncertain result closed for reconciliation.

Relevant controls

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

What changes

A correctly integrated gateway receives no consumable reservation for a total outside the user's stated authority, so its provider-submission gate stays closed.

Test overspend free →Integration guide →

Reproduce the failure safely

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

Test the threat free →