Use case
AI Agent API Billing - Pay Per Call Without Overruns
When an agent pays per API call, a loop is a bill. Cap the spend, throttle the velocity, and attribute every dollar to the provider it paid.
In short
AI agent API billing is how an agent pays for metered or pay-per-call services it consumes, such as model inference, data, or third-party APIs. Agentspay enforces per-transaction, daily, and total caps plus velocity rules, so a retry loop or runaway agent is declined before it racks up charges. Spend is attributed per provider in the audit trail for clean cost reconciliation.
The challenge
A metered agent stuck in a retry loop can burn through a usage budget in minutes, and you only find out when the invoice arrives.
How Agentspay handles it
Agentspay caps each metered wallet and applies velocity rules that limit how much can be spent in a window, so a loop is stopped instead of billed. Each provider gets a scoped card and its own attribution, so you see exactly which API consumed which budget. Cross a threshold and the spend waits for a human, while everything below it settles automatically and is logged.
Further reading: how agents pay per MCP tool call, setting spending limits on x402, and what agent payment infrastructure costs.
The control surfaces
The controls behind it
The surfaces this use case leans on, each enforced before any money moves.
Spend controls
Spend controls
AI agent spend controls are rules that limit what an agent can buy: per-transaction, daily, and total caps, merchant and category allowlists, and velocity limits. Agentspay evaluates them at the API boundary, so a hallucinating or compromised agent is declined before it can overspend, not flagged after.
Learn moreAI agent wallet
Agent wallet
An AI agent wallet is a funded, budgeted account that belongs to a single agent. You top it up to a set amount, attach spend limits and rules, and the agent draws from it. Because the wallet is capped and policy-gated, the agent cannot exceed its budget or spend outside the rules you wrote.
Learn moreVirtual cards
Virtual cards
Virtual cards for AI agents are programmatically issued card credentials that are scoped to a single merchant, amount, and time window. The agent uses a tokenized, masked reference and never sees a raw card number, which keeps you out of PCI scope. You issue and revoke them through a virtual cards API.
Learn moreAudit trail
Audit trail
An audit trail for AI agent spending is an immutable, append-only record of every payment an agent made. Each row links the spend to the intent that triggered it, the agent that requested it, the human who owns the agent, the policy verdict, and the approver. It gives you cost attribution, reconciliation, and a record you can defend.
Learn moreSee the whole flow in how it works, or check what it costs on the pricing page.
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Fund a capped wallet, write a policy, and issue a scoped virtual card today. Sandbox-first and rail-neutral.
Never moves money without policy