Authoryze gives an AI agent rules instead of taps. Every request is checked server-side against per-agent limits, merchant allowlists, and caps across all your agents, in-policy purchases go through with no one approving them, and only exceptions reach a person. Teams get a shared envelope funded once by an admin, approvers who decide without that admin, and one record of every purchase per member and agent. Any MCP client connects, from Claude and ChatGPT to Claude Code and Meta's Muse. Link's wallet for agents solves the narrower consumer case: one person's agent requests a one-time-use card and that person approves every purchase in the Link app. This page is about Link's agent wallet specifically. Stripe's merchant-side Agentic Commerce Protocol is covered in Authoryze vs Stripe Agentic Commerce.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Authoryze | Link's wallet for agents |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Developers and teams running agents | Consumers letting a personal agent shop for them |
| Funding source | Your enrolled Visa or Mastercard, with a single-use credential issued through the card networks' agentic programs (Visa Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard Agent Pay) | The cards and bank accounts already saved in the user's Link wallet |
| Credential the agent gets | Single-use virtual card, returned directly by retrieve_card and drawable once | One-time-use virtual card or Shared Payment Token, valid 12 hours |
| Approval model | Rules first: in-policy requests auto-approve, over-threshold requests route to a human | Every spend request needs the person's approval within 10 minutes |
| Agent-level spend rules | Per-transaction, daily/weekly/monthly caps, merchant allowlists, aggregate caps across agents | Stripe-set caps per integration (500 USD per request and per day, 20,000 USD per 30 days); user-set limits listed as coming soon |
| Acting without approval | Yes, inside rules and envelopes | Not yet, described as roadmap |
| Integration | MCP server; OAuth for Claude and ChatGPT, API key for headless agents | Link CLI and skill files; OAuth device grant for local agents, OAuth client for hosted agents |
| Stripe account required | No | No for payments, yes for financial insights |
| Teams | Live: shared team envelope funded by one admin, approvers who decide without the admin, per-member and per-agent records, one monthly plan | None; one Link account, one approver |
| Agent clients | Any MCP client, including Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Meta's Muse | Agents that run the Link CLI, plus partner integrations |
| Merchant reach | Anywhere that accepts Visa or Mastercard online | Anywhere that accepts cards online, plus Link checkout at Link merchants |
| Pricing | Individuals: 1.5% per transaction, 0.50 USD minimum, no subscription, first 5 transactions free. Teams: Team Starter at 39.99 USD a month for up to 100 transactions or Team Pro at 174.99 USD for up to 500, 0.40 USD per transaction past either, 20 free to start | Not published |
Rules First, Not a Tap per Purchase
Authoryze evaluates every request server-side before a card exists. Per-transaction limits, daily, weekly, and monthly caps per agent, merchant allowlists with subdomain matching, and account-wide aggregate caps so several agents cannot collude past a total. A request that passes every rule and sits under the agent's auto-approve threshold is approved without anyone tapping anything. A request that passes the rules but exceeds the threshold routes to a human. A rule violation is a hard denial. Spending envelopes extend this further. They are an amount the agent can draw against without a per-purchase approval. The person is in the loop for exceptions, not for every transaction.
Link works the other way around. At launch Stripe wrote that each request requires the person's review before the credential is shared with the agent, and that it planned to let people set spending limits and choose when agents can act without additional approval. As of September 16, 2026, link.com/agents still lists those controls as coming soon, and Stripe's docs still describe per-request approval as the only path. The limits that exist today are set by Stripe per integration, not by the user: 500 USD per spend request, 500 USD per day, 20,000 USD per rolling 30 days, a 10-minute approval window, and 12-hour credential validity. There are no merchant allowlists, category rules, or per-agent budgets that the person configures.
Any Agent Connects Over MCP
Authoryze exposes request_purchase, check_status, retrieve_card, report_purchase_outcome, and get_spending_summary as MCP tools. Claude and ChatGPT connect over OAuth. Claude Code, Codex, and custom frameworks pass an agent API key as a bearer token. Meta's Muse connects over MCP as well, and a real purchase went through it end to end in October 2026. There is no CLI to install inside the agent's runtime and no skill file to keep in sync. When a request is approved, the agent calls retrieve_card and gets the single-use card directly in that response, once.
Link's developer surface is the Link CLI plus skill files that teach an agent how to drive it. A local agent authenticates with the OAuth device grant, and a hosted agent registers an OAuth client through Stripe. That works for agents that can shell out to a CLI, and less well for hosted agents that only speak tool calls.
Teams, Not Just One Wallet
Each Authoryze agent gets its own API key and its own rules, so a procurement agent, a research agent, and a support agent can each run under different budgets and merchant lists, with a cross-agent cap over all of them. On a team, one admin funds a shared team envelope with a single passkey, members' agents draw from it, and the team's approvers decide purchases over the threshold without needing the admin. Every purchase is recorded per member and per agent, and the team pays one monthly plan on one billing card. Teams have been live since September 29, 2026. Routing a request to one specific named approver is not live yet: today any of the team's approvers can decide it.
Link is one person, one wallet, one approval per purchase, with no team construct. Its distribution is real, with Link accepted at a large merchant network and built into consumer agents, and that reach is the tradeoff to weigh against rules and teams.
Link and Issuing for Agents
Link's wallet for agents is built on Stripe's Issuing primitives, and Stripe offers Issuing for agents to businesses that want to build their own agent wallets and cards. It gives a business with a Stripe Issuing account per-agent virtual cards with spend limits, merchant category controls, single-use lifecycle controls, and a real-time authorization webhook. You build the rules engine, the approval workflow, the authorization handling, and the agent-facing interface yourself. Authoryze is that layer already built and reachable over MCP, issuing through the card networks' agentic programs (Visa Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard Agent Pay).
When Authoryze Is the Right Choice
Choose Authoryze if you are a developer or team running agents that need to act within defined limits without a human tapping every transaction. That means per-agent rules and envelopes, cross-agent aggregate caps, a shared team envelope with approvers, a full audit trail per member and agent, and a single MCP server that any agent can connect to today.
Sources
Stripe and Link claims on this page were checked on September 16, 2026 against Stripe's launch post for Link's wallet for agents (stripe.com/blog/giving-agents-the-ability-to-pay), the Link CLI docs (docs.stripe.com/agentic-commerce/link-cli), the spend request docs and limits (docs.stripe.com/agentic-commerce/link-cli/use-link-wallet-pay-online), the OAuth docs (docs.stripe.com/agentic-commerce/link-cli/oauth), the Issuing for agents docs (docs.stripe.com/issuing/agents), link.com/agents, and the stripe/link-cli repository on GitHub. If something has changed since, let us know.
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