Polygon has added agent spend controls to Polygon Open Money Stack (OMS). With the feature, a product can give an AI agent a scoped permission on a wallet it already uses. That permission comes with a defined task, approved payment actions, a budget and an expiry. When the agent asks to pay, the wallet checks the request against the terms the team set.
This is a payments infrastructure release with no game attached. It’s aimed at teams building on Polygon whose agents need to buy compute, data or API credits from approved providers. The agent can make those payments without going back to a person for a fresh wallet approval every time a service needs funding.
How the limits work
The permission is held onchain. Teams choose the allowed contracts and methods, a maximum token amount and an expiry. Those terms are recorded in the existing wallet’s onchain Sessions Module, and the agent uses that permission to request payments inside the approved scope.
The agent and the backend can submit payment requests. Once the rule is approved, they can’t raise the budget, widen the approved actions or extend the expiry. The wallet checks every request at execution, and a request outside the rule is rejected at the contract level.
A worked example
Polygon’s example is an agent that keeps a development team’s AI-compute account funded. Before it starts, the team approves the terms in the wallet they already use: a maximum USDC spend, the payment actions it can take and an expiry. When account credit runs low, the agent requests a top-up from an approved provider. If it goes over budget, calls an action outside the approved scope or tries again after the window has closed, the wallet stops the request.
Polygon says the same pattern works when an agent purchases approved services, tops up a product account, pays an invoice that fits established terms or settles an agreed transfer between business wallets.
Where x402 and the Machine Payments Protocol fit
Polygon splits an agent purchase into two jobs. First, a service needs a way to state its price and request payment, and protocols such as x402 and the Machine Payments Protocol help structure that exchange. Then the wallet has to decide whether the agent is allowed to pay. Spend controls handle that second step.
OMS supplies the funded balance, a bounded permission to use it and the money movement around the payment. According to Polygon, the same OMS integration can also cover payins, payouts, routing and settlement as a product grows, so teams don’t have to add a new set of providers for each step.
Polygon has published the permission model, a wallet quickstart and a wallet configuration reference for technical teams.
Polygon Labs says the features and examples are subject to applicable law and may not be available in all jurisdictions. The company also says it can modify, suspend, limit or discontinue any part of OMS at any time, and use of OMS is subject to its terms and conditions.
