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.

Allowance publishes 3 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network: Mandates API, Pricing API, and Status API. Tagged areas include Company, Payments, Agentic Payments, AI Agents, and Virtual Cards.

The Allowance catalog on APIs.io includes 1 event-driven AsyncAPI specification and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Allowance’s developer surface includes authentication, documentation, API reference, getting-started guide, support, engineering blog, pricing, and 27 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

59.2/100 strong ▬ flat Agent 68/100 agent native Front door AI 6/6 dominant Heartbeat 97/100 alive saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreeSelf serve⚡ Free to try

1 published contract 1 MCP Servers

Company Payments Agentic Payments AI Agents Virtual Cards Fintech MCPConsumer TrustSpending ControlsAP2

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 59.2/100 · strong

Contract Quality 11.4 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 10.7 / 15

Access Clarity 9.9 / 15

Operational Transparency 2.3 / 10

Contract Governance 1.6 / 9

Discoverability 5.6 / 8

Regulatory Posture 4.7 / 15

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 2.8 / 10

Agent readiness — 68/100 · agent native

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 12 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 9 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8

Request/Response Examples 7 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 6 / 6

Agent Skills 5 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 6 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 5 / 5

Registration Without a Human 6 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Payments regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created. Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet, not penalised by it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Documented Reversibility +6 pts — a reversal operation in the contract, graded up when a window is documented too
Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document +5 pts — a parsing /.well-known/ucp.json or acp.json declaring a version and at least one service, OR (0.27) a live x402 payment challenge from _data/x402-adoption.json — `self` when its endpoints are on the provider's own domain, `platform` when they are on a vendor's
Dry-Run / Simulate Mode +4 pts — OpenAPI: destructive operations expose a dry_run / simulate / preview / validate_only parameter
Well-Known Catalog +4 pts — common[].type includes WellKnown, APICatalog, or api-catalog
Consent & Bot Identity +3 pts — common[].type includes AIPREF, ContentSignal, WebBotAuth, or HTTPMessageSignatures

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Operational Transparency scores 23.7 — up to +9.9 composite points
Contract Quality scores 60.8 — up to +9.8 composite points
Contract Governance scores 18.2 — up to +9.8 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/allowance/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/allowance to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
x402 Micropayments & Agentic Pay-per-Call	undeclared	-	1	1

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 7

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

measured — observed by APIs.io (verified)

Agent Skills

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

OAuth 2.0 Protected Resource Metadata

measured — observed by APIs.io (verified)

Dynamic Client Registration

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

OAuth 2.0

measured — observed by APIs.io (declared)

APIs 3

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.

Open Collections 3

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Allowance Mandates API

OPEN COLLECTION

Allowance Mandates Pricing API

OPEN COLLECTION

Allowance Mandates Status API

OPEN COLLECTION

Arazzo Workflows 1

Multi-step API workflows described with the Arazzo specification.

Approve 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.

ARAZZO

MCP Servers 1

Model Context Protocol servers that expose these APIs to AI agents.

Allowance MCP Server

Hosted remote MCP server for Allowance. Add https://mcp.useallowance.com to any MCP-compatible agent as a remote server; the MCP client opens a browser to sign in to Allowance, ...

MCP SERVER

Allowance API pricing

Prices published by Allowance, read 2026-10-28 from useallowance.com/pricing.json.

Plan	Price
Consumer	PLACEHOLDER
Developer	PLACEHOLDER

Plan details, limits and sources →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Allowance Plans Pricing

2 plans

PLANS

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

Allowance

SLA

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Allowance Finops

FINOPS

Event Specifications 1

AsyncAPI definitions for this provider's event-driven and streaming APIs.

Allowance Webhooks

ASYNCAPI

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Allowance API Rules

60 rules · 57 errors 1 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

OpenAPI Overlays 1

Overlays applied on top of this provider's contracts. Each card says who wrote it: a document the provider publishes, or one API Evangelist derived or generated.

Allowance Openapi Overlay

3 actions · update · allowance-openapi-original.json

DERIVED

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Allowance Authentication

apiKey/oauth2 · 2 schemes

SECURITY

Allowance Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Scopes 1

OAuth scopes governing access to this provider's APIs.

Allowance Scopes

3 scopes · authorizationCode

3 scopes

SCOPES

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Allowance Agentic Access

7 operations · 3 acting · 1 human-in-the-loop

7 operations · 3 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Get Started 3

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

DeveloperPortal

DeveloperPortal

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

SignUp

SignUp

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

APIReference

APIReference

Agent Surfaces 5

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

LLMsTxt

MCPServer

AgentSkill

WellKnown

Design & Contract 8

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Conformance

ErrorCatalog

Lifecycle

Conventions

Idempotency

DataModel

Webhooks

Arazzo

Scroll for all 8

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

Packages

Packages

CLI

CLI

DeclineCodes

DeclineCodes

Access & Security 3

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

OAuthScopes

OAuthScopes

Authentication

Authentication

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Support

Support

StatusPage

StatusPage

Commercial 4

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Pricing

TermsOfService

PrivacyPolicy

Company 3

The organization behind the API

BlogRSS

BlogRSS

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Overlay

Overlay

Source (apis.yml)

aid: allowance
name: Allowance
description: 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.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/allowance/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: true
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  gated: none
  gated_source:
  - onboarding
  label: Free · Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://useallowance.com/assets/logo.png
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- y-combinator
x-tier: profiled
x-tier-reason: enriched-from-public-surface
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-10-06'
tags:
- Company
- Payments
- Agentic Payments
- AI Agents
- Virtual Cards
- Fintech
- MCP
- Consumer Trust
- Spending Controls
- AP2
tags_raw:
- Company
- Payments
- Agentic Payments
- AI Agents
- Virtual Cards
- Fintech
- Model Context Protocol
- Consumer Trust
- Spending Controls
- AP2
apis:
- aid: allowance:allowance-mandates-api
  name: Allowance Mandates API
  description: The Mandates API from Allowance — 5 operation(s) for mandates.
  humanURL: https://useallowance.com/connect-agent
  baseURL: https://api.useallowance.com/v1
  tags:
  - Mandates
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/allowance-mandates-api-openapi.yml
- aid: allowance:allowance-pricing-api
  name: Allowance Pricing API
  description: The Pricing API from Allowance — 1 operation(s) for pricing.
  humanURL: https://useallowance.com/connect-agent
  baseURL: https://api.useallowance.com/v1
  tags:
  - Pricing
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/allowance-pricing-api-openapi.yml
- aid: allowance:allowance-status-api
  name: Allowance Status API
  description: The Status API from Allowance — 1 operation(s) for status.
  humanURL: https://useallowance.com/connect-agent
  baseURL: https://api.useallowance.com/v1
  tags:
  - Status
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/allowance-status-api-openapi.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/allowance-plans-pricing.yml
- url: https://useallowance.com/blog/rss.xml
  type: BlogRSS
- type: Website
  url: https://useallowance.com/
- type: Overlay
  url: overlays/allowance-openapi-overlay.yaml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/allowance-domain-security.yml
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/allowance-agentic-access.yml
- type: OAuthScopes
  url: scopes/allowance-scopes.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/allowance-authentication.yml
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://useallowance.com/connect-agent
- type: Documentation
  url: https://useallowance.com/connect-agent
- type: APIReference
  url: https://useallowance.com/openapi.json
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://useallowance.com/connect-agent
- type: Support
  url: https://useallowance.com/support
- type: Blog
  url: https://useallowance.com/blog/
- type: Pricing
  url: https://useallowance.com/pricing.json
- type: SignUp
  url: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/allowance-agent-wallet/id6762312262
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://useallowance.com/terms
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://useallowance.com/privacy
- type: StatusPage
  url: https://useallowance.com/status.json
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/allowance-llms.txt
- type: MCPServer
  url: mcp/allowance-mcp.yml
- type: AgentSkill
  url: skills/allowance-purchase.md
- type: Packages
  url: packages/allowance-packages.yml
- type: CLI
  url: cli/allowance-cli.yml
- type: WellKnown
  url: well-known/allowance-well-known.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/allowance-conformance.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
  url: errors/allowance-problem-types.yml
- type: DeclineCodes
  url: errors/allowance-decline-codes.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/allowance-lifecycle.yml
- type: Conventions
  url: conventions/allowance-conventions.yml
- type: Idempotency
  url: conventions/allowance-conventions.yml
- type: DataModel
  url: data-model/allowance-data-model.yml
- type: Webhooks
  url: asyncapi/allowance-webhooks.yml
- type: Arazzo
  name: Approve a mandate and issue a virtual card
  url: arazzo/allowance-mandate-to-card.yml
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-19'
  status: backfilled
  pass: local-v1
  note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence

Allowance API — frequently asked questions

Does Allowance have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 3 APIs from Allowance, including Allowance Mandates API, Allowance Pricing API and Allowance Status API.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Allowance API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 3 OpenAPI specifications for Allowance, each linked for download from this page.

How do I authenticate with the Allowance API?

Allowance documents its authentication (apiKey/oauth2 · 2 schemes). The details are profiled on APIs.io as Allowance Authentication.

How much does the Allowance API cost?

Allowance publishes its prices; its Consumer plan is PLACEHOLDER as of 2026-10-28. APIs.io lists 2 pricing plans for Allowance, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Does Allowance have an MCP server?

Yes. APIs.io lists 1 MCP server for Allowance: Hosted remote MCP server for Allowance. Add https://mcp.useallowance.com to any MCP-compatible agent as a remote server; the MCP client opens a browser to sign in to Allowance, after which the agent c

Is the Allowance API ready for AI agents?

Allowance has a Kin Score of 59.2 out of 100 (strong) and an Agent Readiness score of 67.6 (agent-native), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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