How do AI agents make payments?

AI agents make payments through a delegated authorization layer that receives a scoped payment credential at session start.

How do AI agents make payments?

For an AI agent to truly be "autonomous," it must be able to handle financial transactions — paying for API calls, compute, data, or services — without requiring a human to manually click "Approve" for every $0.05 micro-payment.

The Delegated Authorization Flow

SecureLend's Delegare infrastructure enables this through a four-step delegated authorization process:

1. Scoped Budgeting

A human user defines a "spending mandate" for the agent. For example: "This agent can spend up to $10.00 this month, only at merchant m_securelend_platform, for the purpose of document_processing."

2. Credential Issuance

Delegare issues a cryptographically signed authorization credential (based on the SD-JWT-VC standard). This credential is given to the agent.

3. Autonomous Execution

When the agent needs to perform a task that has a cost, it calls the Delegare API and presents its authorization credential. Delegare validates the request against the pre-approved mandate.

4. Settlement

If valid, Delegare settles the payment immediately using either a stored Stripe card or USDC on Base. The service provider receives their funds, and the agent completes the task.

Security First

Importantly, the AI agent never holds the user's private keys or credit card numbers. It only holds a scoped authorization that can only be used for the specific purpose and amount defined by the user.

How do AI agents make payments?