Let your bots pay for purchases

What this does for you

A bot can ask to buy something for you — a part, a ticket, a subscription — and pay for it with a single-use card that works once, at one shop, for at most the amount you approved. You approve every purchase yourself with a passkey or a security key, and you can choose to pay for it with a saved Link payment method.

Turn payments on

Payments are off until an owner or an administrator turns them on. In your own personal organisation, that is you.

1. Open Settings, then Payments (/settings/payments).
2. Tick Let bots ask to pay for purchases.
3. Choose the Currency your bots spend in. A purchase in any other currency is refused, never converted.
4. Set Most one purchase may cost and Most all purchases may cost in one day. One purchase cannot cost more than a day's total.
5. Select Save. The page says Payments are on.

Then add the Spend requests and single-use cards plugin from Plugins and grant it to the bots that may ask. A member who is not an owner or an administrator sees these settings but cannot change them.

If the page says the deployment has no card issuer, payments can be turned on but no card can be made until whoever runs your deployment sets one up.

Approve a purchase

When a bot wants to buy something, a card appears in your conversation with the amount, the shop, what it is for, and how much of today's limit is left.

• Select Approve and confirm with your passkey (your phone or computer) or your security key (plug it in and enter its PIN). The first time, you add the key first.
• On the desktop app, you can approve with a USB security key there instead.
• Select Deny to refuse. Nothing is bought, and no key is needed.

Pay with Link

Where the shop's checkout offers Link and you have saved Link payment methods, the card lets you pick one before you approve. The bot still pays the shop with its single-use card; once that payment has gone through, the amount the shop actually took is charged to the Link payment method you picked — once, and never more than you approved. If Link declines the charge, it is not retried, and your organisation's audit log records it.

Turn payments off

Open Settings → Payments, untick Let bots ask to pay for purchases and select Save. No bot can ask to pay from its next run on, whatever it was granted.