---
term: "Spend limit"
category: "Mandates and authorisation"
url: https://agenticopenfinance.com/glossary/spend-limit
source: AgenticOpenFinance glossary
---

# Spend limit

> A cap on how much an agent may pay, enforced by the system that executes the payment, not by the agent.

A spend limit is a cap on how much an agent may pay, set per transaction, per period or in total, and enforced by the system that executes the payment rather than by the agent. Limits can also restrict currency, merchant or category. The Agentic Commerce Protocol, for example, lets a payment provider tokenise a card with allowance constraints such as a maximum amount, a currency, an expiry time and a merchant.

Related terms: [Mandate](https://agenticopenfinance.com/glossary/mandate.md), [Delegated payment](https://agenticopenfinance.com/glossary/delegated-payment.md), [Variable recurring payment](https://agenticopenfinance.com/glossary/variable-recurring-payment.md), [Mandate expiry](https://agenticopenfinance.com/glossary/mandate-expiry.md)