Free resource
AI agent payment policy template. Limits, approvals and audit, ready to adapt.
A free, vendor-neutral template for the policy an AI agent pays under: caps, allowed payees, approvals, expiry, fail-closed rules and audit fields.
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Download the YAML templateWhat this template is
A starting point for writing down exactly what an AI agent may pay, to whom, up to what limits, who approves, and what gets recorded. It is vendor-neutral: use it with your own systems, a payment provider’s controls, or Flominzo AgentPay.
It is written for finance, payment operations, risk and engineering teams preparing an agent pilot, and for anyone who has to explain to a risk committee how an agent’s payments are controlled.
Every value in the template is an example. It is not legal or compliance advice; review it with your own risk, finance and compliance owners.
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How to use it
- Name an owner and approvers. One person is accountable for the policy; others approve payments above thresholds.
- Start narrow. One purpose, one rail, a short allow-list of payees and low caps. Run the agent read-only first and compare what it would have paid with what your team paid.
- Set caps and approval tiers. Per payment, per day and per month, plus approval by amount and for payments that can’t be reversed.
- Decide failure behaviour. Deny on any error, timeout or expired policy, and alert a person.
- Agree the audit fields. What is recorded for every allowed and refused attempt.
- Review monthly. Look at refused attempts, near-misses and payee changes, then adjust.
Field by field
| Section | What it sets |
|---|---|
| policy | Identifier, version, status, description, owner and approvers. Keep old versions so any payment can be traced to the rules in force at the time. |
| agent | The agent’s own identity and the team that runs it. The agent can never change its own policy. |
| scope | Allowed purposes, blocked categories, rails, currencies and the accounts money may leave from. |
| counterparties | The allow-list of payees with per-payee caps, and a cooling period for new or changed bank details. |
| limits | Per-payment, daily and monthly caps, a daily count limit, and budget reservation so concurrent agents can’t overspend. |
| approvals | Approval tiers by amount and by reversibility, and how long an approval request waits before counting as a refusal. |
| validity | When the authority starts and expires, and the hours in which the agent may pay. |
| revocation | Who can revoke the policy, the procedure, and how quickly it must take effect. |
| failure_behaviour | Deny on check errors, timeouts and missing or expired policies, and who is alerted. |
| idempotency | One key per payment intent, a status query before any retry, and investigation of unknown outcomes. |
| audit | The fields recorded for every decision, and how long they are kept. |
| reconciliation | The evidence every agent payment must match (provider status, settlement file, bank statement), and what happens to a difference. |
| review | How often the policy is reviewed, and by whom. |
How a payment is checked against the policy
When an agent proposes a payment, each section of the template is a check, in this order: is the policy active and not expired; is the purpose, rail, currency and source account in scope; is the payee on the allow-list and past any cooling period; do the per-payment, daily and monthly caps still hold once the budget is reserved; does the amount or the rail need an approval; and has an approval arrived in time. Any check that fails, errors or times out means the payment is refused and recorded, with the rule that refused it.
After a payment is sent, the idempotency and reconciliation sections take over: no retry without a status query, and no payment closed until the provider, settlement and bank evidence agree.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Putting limits in the prompt only. The template is only useful if a system outside the model enforces it.
- Sharing a user account with the agent. Give the agent its own identity, so every decision is attributable.
- Open-ended authority. Always set an expiry; renewing a policy is cheap, forgetting one is not.
- Treating a timeout as a failure. An unknown outcome is not a failed payment; query the status before any retry.
- Skipping reconciliation. An agent payment isn’t finished when the provider says "sent"; it is finished when the evidence agrees.
Go further
Read payment permissions and approvals for AI agents for the reasoning behind each control and the questions risk teams ask.
Talk to us about enforcing it with Flominzo AgentPayLet’s make it specific to you.
Bring your systems, payment flows, and questions. We’ll help define the next step.
Talk to the team