Conto

Consumer agent controls

Spend controls for personal assistants

Each user sets which merchants their assistant can use, how much, and when to ask.

Industries

Personal agents · Travel & events · Delivery & gig work · Hospitality

Best for

Assistants in iMessage, WhatsApp, and Telegram

Controls

Merchant rules, spend caps, approval thresholds, per user

Outcome

Users delegate spending because they set the boundary

How a user's rules reach the payment

Your user sets the rules once. Conto checks every attempt against them before money moves.

Step 1

Your user sets the rules

Merchants, spend limits, and the amount that needs their approval first.

Step 2

Conto checks every attempt

Merchant, amount, and category, weighed against that user's rules in the payment path.

Step 3

It clears, asks, or stops

Routine spending settles. Anything over the threshold goes back to them in one tap.

Rails

The same rules, on the card your user already carries

Controls are not tied to one rail. Your user connects the card they already have and Conto gates the credential, so the assistant spends under their rules without ever holding the card. Conto-issued cards for the assistant itself are in pilot.

Ask about the card pilot

Available now

Connected cards. The credential is never stored by Conto or released to the agent.

Coming soon

Conto-issued cards, with each authorization decided against the same rules in real time.

Either way

The rules, the approvals, and the record do not change with the rail.

How each attempt is decided against the rules your user set

What your user set

$180/ $500 this week

36% spent · $320 left

Per purchase$300 max
Ask me above$100
Merchantssaved list · food, shopping, tickets

Set by the user in your product, stored per user, enforced by Conto.

What the assistant tried

Blue Bottle

food · saved merchant

$34.00

under the ask threshold

REI

shopping · saved merchant

$214.00

Approve $214.00 at REI?

ApproveDecline

one-time link · Telegram, WhatsApp, email, or your webhook

over $100

unknown-store.co

not on the list

$640.00

over $300 · merchant not allowed

Conto does not run the checkout. It holds the rules each user set and decides every attempt against them before money moves, so routine spending never interrupts anyone and only the cases the user asked about come back to them.

The dials you can hand your users

Each of these is set per user and checked at the payment. Expose as many as suit your product, from a single monthly cap to the full set.

Spend limits, per purchase and rolling

A ceiling on any single purchase, plus daily, weekly, and monthly budgets. A runaway loop or a misread instruction hits the cap, not the account balance.

Merchant and category rules

The user decides where the assistant can spend. Groceries and rides can be routine while gift cards, transfers, and unknown merchants stay off the table entirely.

Approval thresholds, and where the question lands

The user sets the amount that needs their approval. Above it, a signed one-time approve-or-decline link goes to Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, email, or your own webhook, landing in a thread they already have open.

Guardrails the assistant cannot talk its way past

Velocity limits, repeat-charge detection, and hard stops sit under the user-facing dials. They are enforced in the payment path, so a prompt injection that reaches the model still meets the same wall.

Every decision, with the rule that made it

Every attempt carries the merchant, the amount, the rule that decided it, and the approval that released it, so a disputed charge is a lookup rather than an investigation.

Your thread1 waiting on you

Row L, two seats for Friday. That is $129, over the $100 you asked me to check with you on.

Ticketmaster

events · 2 tickets

$129.00
over your $100 ask-first linenothing charged yet
Reply YESReply NO

one-time link · Telegram, WhatsApp, email, or your webhook

Cleared without asking

Blue Bottle Coffee

food · 8:02am

$11.00

Target

shopping · yesterday

$49.47

Demo

Your assistant spends up to the ceiling you set

Under $100 the checkout clears on its own, and anything higher sends the approval to your chat instead of the charge.

What the control layer buys you

Users hand an assistant real spending power, because they set the limits themselves instead of trusting yours.

You ship granular spend controls without building a policy engine, a per-user limits ledger, or an approval system.

A compromised prompt cannot become an unbounded charge, because the rules are checked at the payment rather than in the model.

Support and trust teams can show which purchase happened, which rule allowed it, and who approved it.