Allowance is now available in iMessage. Meet Alfie, your personal shopper. Tell him what you need, send a photo, or share a link. He understands the context and finds what works without making you leave the conversation. Try it now.

Tell it what matters#

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Allowance can search with your size, destination, deadline, budget, and preferences in mind. If the first answer is not quite right, reply the way you would to a knowledgeable friend: “more polished,” “not that color,” or “show me three options.”

Show it what words cannot#

Sometimes the important context is already in your camera roll.

Send a selfie and ask which makeup works with your coloring. Send a photo of your outfit and ask for comfortable shoes that match it. Send a screenshot and ask for something similar under a different budget.

The photo is not decoration. It is part of the shopping request.

Send the link instead of starting over#

If you are already looking at a product, forward the link and add the question the product page cannot answer:

The link and your intent travel together. No reopening ten tabs. No rebuilding the same search somewhere else.

Let it shop. Stay in control.#

Allowance can search, compare, add the right variant, and prepare checkout. It cannot approve its own purchase.

Before anything is bought, you see the merchant, item, and maximum total. You approve the exact request with Face ID. Only then does Allowance create a new one-time card for that purchase.

The shopping can feel magical. The payment boundary should feel boring: you approve every purchase, and the agent never receives your real card number.

Message Allowance

New iMessageNew WhatsApp

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Click to copy

Open your camera and point it here

You can now review purchase requests, approve or deny spending, manage your payment methods, connect your favorite AI agents, and keep everything in one place from your Android phone.

With Android joining iPhone and the web, Allowance is now available across every major platform. Whether you're using ChatGPT, Claude, or another AI agent, managing your approvals is always just a tap away.

Download the Android app and let us know what you think. We're excited to see what you build with it.

The best card for a purchase is often already in your wallet. The hard part is remembering which one to use when checkout arrives, and that tradeoff gets harder to manage as agents begin shopping on our behalf. An agent can find a product and bring you a purchase to approve in seconds. It should be able to handle the card decision, too.

That’s why today we’re introducing Rewards Optimization.

When you turn it on, Allowance handles that decision at the approval step. It looks at the merchant you are shopping with and the credit cards in your wallet, then selects the best eligible card to help you earn the most rewards. The decision is specific to your cards and that purchase, not a generic recommendation.

Turn on Rewards Optimization#

Rewards Optimization is available now on Allowance for the web. Open Allowance, go to Settings → Payment Cards, and enable Rewards Optimization. It will also be available on iPhone in the next app update (v1.09+).

From there, it works quietly in the background. When there is a clearly better card, Allowance selects it before you approve. You always see the selection and can override it or choose a different card. When there is no clear recommendation, Allowance keeps the usual card picker.

Providing your credit card information directly to a merchant to complete a purchase can come with hesitation on whether you can trust the merchant to securely complete the transaction, and only that transaction. Yet, it’s an ordinary compromise we make daily.

We are often providing our card number to an unknown person on the other side—this may be on a new merchant website or a business over the phone. While many times nothing goes wrong, it still puts you, the consumer, in a vulnerable state as your credit card information now remains usable long after the purchase is over.

This ends now. Today, Allowance is introducing One-Time Cards.

A One-Time Card gives you a new credit card number each time you want to make a purchase. You control the maximum payment amount allowed and the merchant where the card will be used (if known). After the one-time card number is used, the number can never be used for a second purchase, even if the merchant did not charge the maximum allowed amount.

Creating one is easy with Allowance—just open the Allowance app, enter an amount, select a specific or any merchant, and click approve. Allowance will generate the single-use card information that you can copy and paste into your checkout screen or provide over the phone to complete your transaction. And the best part is, you keep earning the same credit card rewards you usually would for that same purchase, but now, it’s without handing out your actual credit card number.

One-Time Cards use the same technology that powers Allowance’s agentic payments, allowing you to request a One-Time Card with the Allowance plugin for ChatGPT, the Allowance connector for Claude, and Allowance MCP.

You no longer have to compromise on the security of your credit card information—this information will always stay with you and you stay in control of your purchases.

A card number should not be a permanent permission.

If you’re new to Allowance, getting started is easy. Simply sign up with your existing credit card information, no need to open a new credit card or use your Social Security Number.

That takes more than a secure payment. The agent also has to handle the messy parts of the web: finding the right thing, understanding a page, filling in forms, moving through a multi-step checkout, and reliably finishing the job.

Codex has given us the strongest browser-use experience we have worked with. With GPT-5.6, it can move through dynamic websites faster and more reliably, which makes a real difference in Allowance.

For a customer, the experience should stay simple: ask your agent for what you need, approve the purchase on your phone, and let it take care of the rest.

Allowance handles the secure approval and payment step. Codex handles the web. Together, that means an agent can do more than suggest what to buy. It can actually help finish the task.

That’s the shift we’re excited about: as browser use gets more capable, Allowance can make buying through an agent feel less like a demo and more like something you can actually rely on.

For people without an iPhone, that meant Allowance was not an option. For people doing most of their agentic shopping on a desktop, it meant breaking their flow to reach for a different device.

Now approvals can happen on the web app.

When an agent is ready to buy, Allowance shows you the merchant and maximum amount. You can review the request and decide from your computer, while the work is still in front of you.

The added convenience does not weaken the boundary. Security remains at the center of Allowance. It is first and foremost a permission layer for agents, designed to make sure the person, not the agent, has the final say.

Before an agent can make a purchase, Allowance asks you to approve it with a biometric check, such as Touch ID, Face ID, or Windows Hello. An agent can prepare the purchase and bring it to checkout. It cannot approve it.

The web app also gives you one place to connect agents, manage payment setup and shipping addresses, see active allowances, and follow a purchase from request through checkout.

Now, whether you are on your phone or at your desk, Allowance makes it easier than ever to manage your agent’s spending.

Allowance is the easiest way to give ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work, and Codex a secure way to make purchases on your behalf. Connect it once, then ask the agent you are already using to buy something.

You always remain in control. Every request includes the merchant and a fixed spend cap for you to approve on your phone. If approved, the agent receives a one-time virtual card that can only spend within those limits, without ever seeing your real card number.

Purchases are funded by the card you already use, so you keep earning its rewards while your agent handles the work.

Once connected, try:

• @Allowance Book me a nonstop flight from San Francisco to New York next Friday for under $500.
• @Allowance Buy me a Mac mini from Apple for under $700.
• @Allowance Create a $200 one-time card for a purchase at Fanatics.

You can also use @Allowance to review active spending permissions or pause an allowance at any time.

This is what AI payments should feel like: easy to use, secure by default, and always under your control.

As of July 9, you can connect Allowance directly from Claude's Connectors Directory. Connect Allowance to your Claude account from your desktop. Once connected, Claude can ask for your approval, receive a scoped one-time card, and finish checkout without ever seeing your real card number.

Then use it on claude.ai, in Claude Code, Cowork, and the Claude mobile app when you use the same Claude account.

The flow is simple: Claude finds what you want, Allowance sends the merchant and amount to your phone, and you approve or deny it. If you approve, Claude gets a virtual card limited to that purchase.

You don't need to configure MCP or copy card details into chat, and Claude never gets open-ended spending access.

You can fund purchases with the credit card you already use, so you keep earning its rewards while Claude handles checkout. When the purchase is done, you have the receipt and a record of what was approved.

We're excited about this one because it makes the secure path the easy path. Connect Allowance once, approve purchases on your phone, and let Claude finish the job.

On your desktop, open the Allowance connector and connect it to your Claude account.

See the launch announcement on X.

Originally published on Launch YC on May 22, 2026.

The problem#

AI agents can now browse websites, research products, and complete real-world tasks autonomously, but they cannot complete purchases for you.

Using AI to buy something has usually meant pasting your real credit card into a prompt and giving an agent unrestricted spending access. That's dangerous.

The solution#

Allowance gives AI agents one-time virtual cards with approval controls and built-in limits. The AI agent never sees your real card number.

With Allowance, you can:

• Limit spending amounts.
• Restrict purchases to specific merchants.
• Approve or deny purchases in real time.
• Revoke access at any time.
• Continue using your existing credit cards and rewards.

This unlocks new ways for AI to help:

• Plan and book travel, hotels, and flights within limits you define.
• Track out-of-stock products and buy them when inventory returns.
• Place food orders and complete ticket or ecommerce checkouts on your behalf.
• Monitor prices and buy when something drops below your target.
• Handle repetitive purchases and checkouts across the web.

Progress in AI agents, browser automation, and payment protocols makes it increasingly clear that agents will transact across the internet on our behalf. Safe guardrails and user-controlled payment permissions are the missing layer that makes this possible.

I've been using Allowance to make real-world purchases through AI agents, including food orders, reservations, and ecommerce checkouts.

Why I built Allowance#

I started building Allowance after running into this problem myself while trying to book a reservation using OpenClaw. The agent successfully navigated the flow, but then asked me to paste in my credit card number to hold the reservation.

That felt fundamentally wrong. It made the missing layer for agentic commerce obvious: safe, user-controlled payments.

Try Allowance#

Allowance is live. Connect an agent and tell me what you use it for, how it could better fit into your life, and which purchasing guardrails you want next.