Approval Workflows for Agent Payments Approval workflows let you keep low-risk agent payments fast while routing exceptional cases through
human review. In Conto, approvals are part of the payment control plane, not an afterthought layered
on later.
When to Use Approval Workflows Approval workflows are a strong fit when you need any of the following:
Payments above a finance threshold
New recipients that have not built trust yet
Category-specific review, such as treasury or vendor onboarding flows
Role-based approvals for finance, ops, or compliance
Dual control or sequential review for larger transfers
How the Flow Works How Conto Matches a Workflow Conto evaluates active workflows in priority order and picks the first workflow whose trigger
conditions match the payment context.
Supported trigger conditions Trigger What it matches amountThresholdAmounts at or above a threshold currencyCurrency-specific review categoriesCategory-based review, such as vendor or infrastructure spend agentTypesSpecific agent frameworks or classes newRecipientsFirst-time recipients counterpartyTrustLevelLow-trust or unknown counterparties
This makes approval workflows a good complement to trust scoring and counterparty rules. For example,
you can auto-approve trusted vendors while forcing review for unknown recipients.
Workflow Settings That Matter Setting What it does priorityHigher-priority workflows match first requiredApprovalsNumber of approvals needed before a payment moves forward timeoutHoursExpiration window for pending requests allowSelfApprovalWhether the initiator can approve their own request approverRolesRole-based access, such as OWNER or ADMIN specificApproversExplicit user allowlist for a workflow sequentialApprovalEnforces approval order when specific approvers are set
Any rejection ends the workflow immediately. Approvals accumulate until the required approval
count is reached.
External Approval Channels Approval requests can be delivered to external channels so finance or ops teams can act without
logging into Conto for every review.
Supported channels include:
Slack
Email
Telegram
WhatsApp
Webhook
Each decision records the acting channel, and Conto keeps an audit trail of who approved, when they
approved, and how the request was resolved.
For step-by-step setup, see /guides/external-approvals .
Recommended Patterns Pattern 1: Single approval for large payments Setting Example Trigger amountThreshold = 100Required approvals 1Approver roles OWNER, ADMINBest for Day-to-day spend that only needs review above a threshold
Pattern 2: Review first-time recipients Setting Example Trigger newRecipients = trueRequired approvals 1Approver roles ADMINBest for Preventing agents from sending funds to unknown addresses without review
Pattern 3: Dual control for sensitive transfers Setting Example Trigger amountThreshold = 5000Required approvals 2Self approval falseBest for Treasury, vendor onboarding, or high-value transfers
Pattern 4: Sequential approval for finance + security Setting Example Specific approvers finance lead, then security leadSequential approval trueBest for Controls that require ordered sign-off from multiple stakeholders
Pair Approval Workflows with Trust Scoring One of the highest-signal combinations is:
Use trust scoring to classify counterparties.
Let trusted or verified recipients flow normally.
Route unknown or deteriorating counterparties into approval workflows.
That gives you a fast path for established counterparties and a controlled path for new or risky
ones.
Canonical Approval Architecture The most common production stack looks like this:
Policy engine blocks clearly disallowed payments outright.
Trust scoring enriches the recipient before the payment is evaluated.
Approval workflows catch the gray area between auto-approve and hard deny.
External channels deliver requests to the real stakeholders.
Audit logs and webhooks make the outcome visible to finance and operations systems.
External Approvals Connect Slack, email, Telegram, WhatsApp, or webhooks
Trust Scoring Use counterparty trust as an approval trigger
Securing Agents See where approvals fit in a layered policy model
Architecture Patterns Visual reference for approval and payment flows