Allowance
Allowance is a consumer trust layer for AI agent payments, backed by Y Combinator. It lets people give AI agents limited, revocable spending power without ever sharing a real credit card number. An agent proposes a spending mandate (a permission object with a budget, merchant and category restrictions, and a time limit); the human owner approves it from the Allowance iOS app; and Allowance then issues single-use virtual cards (PAN, expiry, CVV) that are amount-capped, merchant-locked, and short-lived so the agent can complete checkout autonomously within the approved rules. Allowance exposes a pre-launch OpenAPI 3.1 REST API, a hosted remote MCP server, a published agent SKILL.md, a CLI (PyPI and npm), plus ChatGPT and Claude connectors. The mandate model is designed as a natural precursor to the AP2 Agent Payments Protocol.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles Allowance the way a machine reads it — 11 machine-readable artifacts across 3 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Allowance scores 58.0/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 84/100 (agent native). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile Allowance
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Allowance. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 3
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Allowance Mandates API
The Mandates API from Allowance — 5 operation(s) for mandates.
Allowance Pricing API
The Pricing API from Allowance — 1 operation(s) for pricing.
Allowance Status API
The Status API from Allowance — 1 operation(s) for status.
Arazzo Workflows 2
Real integrations are rarely a single call. Arazzo describes the multi-step sequences — auth, then create, then confirm — so both a human and an agent can follow the choreography, not just the endpoints.
Multi-step API workflows described with the Arazzo specification.
_Index
ARAZZOApprove a mandate and issue a virtual card
Create a spending mandate, wait for the human owner to approve it, then request a single-use virtual card for a specific purchase against the active mandate.
ARAZZOMCP Servers 1
Model Context Protocol servers expose these APIs directly to AI agents. We profile them because agent-native access is the fastest-growing way this provider's capabilities actually get used.
Model Context Protocol servers that expose these APIs to AI agents.
allowance-mcp.yml
MCP SERVEREvent Specifications 1
Not every API is request/response. AsyncAPI describes the event-driven and streaming side — the webhooks and channels — so the asynchronous half of the interface is documented the same way the synchronous half is.
AsyncAPI definitions for this provider's event-driven and streaming APIs.
Allowance Webhooks
ASYNCAPISecurity Posture 2
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Scopes 1
OAuth scopes are the vocabulary of least-privilege access. Profiling them shows exactly what an integration — or an agent acting on a user's behalf — is allowed to do.
OAuth scopes governing access to this provider's APIs.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for Allowance — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 3
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 2
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 5
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Design & Contract 8
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Scroll within the panel for all 8 ·
Build 3
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 3
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 2
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 3
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 1
The organization behind the API
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