Before you begin
Use a Builder or Enterprise organization, an existing agent, and an Owner or Admin account. Have the cardholder available to verify purchase authorizations. Purchases are in USD, and each credential works for one checkout.Set up your card
1. Choose the card and cardholder
Open your agent’s Connected Cards tab and choose Connect a card. Select I own it or A teammate owns it. Enter a new card through the secure hosted fields, or choose Use a saved card to select a card belonging to that cardholder. Saving a card does not let the agent spend.2. Set the agent’s limits
For this example, set 100 daily, and **500 a purchase and $1,000 a day, and saving raises those to match any higher limit you set for its first agent. A saved card shows its limits, and an agent limit above them is rejected. Leave Set up a purchase authorization now (optional) off, choose Review card connection, review the cardholder and limits, and choose Save card. You can save the card without knowing what the agent will buy.3. Authorize a purchase
A mandate is the verified purchase authorization. It must be active before your agent can request a credential. Choose Authorize purchase on the connected card. Set Purchase type, Merchant name, Merchant URL, Country, Amount (USD) and Expires in. Merchant category code is optional. Choose One purchase for a single checkout, or Multiple purchases for repeated draws against the amount until the authorization expires. The same fields appear during setup when you turn on Set up a purchase authorization now (optional). For this example, use Example Software, https://software.example, US, $25, and 1 hour. Save the authorization. The cardholder then chooses Verify authorization and completes the provider’s secure verification flow. For a teammate’s card, Conto emails them the verification link, and you can copy it with Copy verification link. They sign in to the same organization to use it. Conto confirms the authorization’s status with the provider before it can be used. Only the cardholder can verify their own authorization, whatever their role in the organization. Owners and admins cannot verify it for them.Make a purchase
Your agent prepares the purchase with your computer-use tools. Your backend uses the connected-card SDK to request a credential against the verified authorization, using a stable idempotency key for that purchase. Conto checks the merchant, amount, current limits, and any review requirement. Keep credentials out of model prompts, tool results, and logs. If the request needs review, Conto alerts the organization owners by email and the request appears in Needs attention on the agent’s Connected Cards tab. An Owner, Admin, or Manager chooses Approve or Reject. After approval, the integration retries the original request with the same input and key, and Conto rechecks the current rules. Approval itself does not submit a payment. A denied request must stop without requesting a replacement under a new key. An approved request returns the credential once. See decisions and retries for uncertain outcomes and confirming payment.Manage authorizations
Keep the Conto request ID and the merchant’s non-sensitive order reference. Confirm payment using the merchant receipt and card activity. A credential being issued, received, or reported used is not proof of settlement. From the agent’s Connected Cards tab, complete pending verification, review requests, or revoke a mandate. Revoking blocks new credential requests and asks the provider to cancel the allowance. Use Refresh on the revoked authorization if provider cancellation is pending. Revocation does not freeze the original card, refund purchases, or guarantee an already issued credential is cancelled. To take a card away from an agent, choose Remove card on the card. Every live authorization on it is revoked and the agent can no longer request card details with it. A purchase already in flight can still complete, and a credential issued before the removal may still work, so check the card statement if one was in progress. The card stays removed until an Owner or Admin chooses Add back on it, on the agent’s tab or under Use a saved card, and sets the agent’s limits again. Revoked authorizations do not come back, so the cardholder verifies a new one before the agent can buy anything. A card removed because its agent was deleted cannot be added back. A connected card also has its own limits, which apply to every agent on it. An Owner or Admin can change them with Edit card limits on the card in the agent’s tab, or by opening the card from Cards. An agent’s limits never exceed the card’s, so Conto rejects card limits below any agent’s limits on that card and names those agents. Lower the agent limits first. Raising an agent limit does not change an existing mandate’s amount cap or expiration. The agent limits on a card count purchases on that card. A spending policy assigned to the agent or to your organization counts the agent’s purchases across all of its cards: with a 100 a day in total, not $100 on each card. For a denied request, check those limits, merchant scope, verification, and expiration. If a denial, cancellation, or purchase outcome stays unresolved, contact support with the request ID and masked evidence, never full card details.Try it with a test card
A test card lets you and your agent try card controls without a real card. It is available on every plan, including Free. Purchases are simulated at Conto’s test merchants: no card is charged and no funds move.- Open your agent’s Connected Cards tab and choose Add test card. Conto adds a card labelled Test card: no real charges. There are no card details to enter and nothing to verify. The agent starts with limits of 100 a day, which you can change with Edit limits.
- Choose Authorize test purchase. Pick a test merchant, One purchase or Multiple purchases, an amount, and an expiry. The authorization is saved with a Simulated verification instead of a cardholder step, and nothing claims a cardholder verified it.
- Give your agent its standard SDK key. It lists the test card, requests a single-use test credential, and completes checkout at the test merchant. See test cards in the SDK guide.
Set up a test card from code
To set up a test card without the dashboard, for example from a coding agent, use an organization API key with thewallets:write scope, such as the key conto login creates. Your agent’s own SDK key cannot do any of this, and only a person can approve a purchase that needs review.
Changes made with a key are recorded in the audit log under that key.
Test cards and connected cards stay separate. A test authorization only works with a test card, a test credential only works at the test checkout, and upgrading your plan does not turn a test card into a real one. To use a real card, connect one on Builder or Enterprise.