Agent settlement is the control plane that decides when money should move in an agent workflow.
For Paybond, that means five things:
- A signed agreement boundary
- A committed budget
- Evidence attached as work happens
- A deterministic settlement check
- A receipt you can replay later
The five-step model
A settlement lifecycle for real agent systems
This is the path Paybond optimizes for: clear agreements, bounded spend, attributable evidence, deterministic decisions.
1. Intent
2. Escrow
3. Evidence
4. Evaluation
5. Receipts
One transaction, start to finish
To make the five steps concrete, imagine an agent booking a flight capped at $200:
- Intent — a signed agreement: pay up to $200 for
travel.booker.purchase, releasing only when a valid booking confirmation comes back. - Escrow — the $200 is reserved, so the booking tool runs inside an explicit spend boundary.
- Evidence — the agent books an economy fare and attaches the result: confirmation
AA-8JZ3QK, fare $197.50. - Evaluation — the completion rule checks that evidence against the agreement. It matches, so Paybond releases $197.50 — and would have refunded the full hold if no confirmation arrived.
- Receipt — a signed record goes to finance: who approved the $200, what the agent booked, and that $197.50 was paid — replayable later without database access.
That completion rule in step 4 is what the docs call a predicate: a deterministic check that passes or fails on the submitted evidence, so the same inputs always produce the same release-or-refund decision.
Why normal payment flows break down
- A card charge only proves that money moved.
- A webhook only proves that one system emitted an event.
- A screenshot only proves that someone captured a moment out of context.
Agent commerce needs a stronger record: who agreed to what, what evidence was collected, and why the settlement decision was made.
What Paybond adds
- Signed intent boundary so the agreement does not drift.
- Outcome-verified release or refund so settlement is driven by completion rules and signed evidence.
- Tenant-scoped evidence handling so multi-tenant platforms do not cross-contaminate decisions.
- Portable receipts so downstream reviewers can verify what happened without database access.
How this supports agentic banking infrastructure
Agentic banking infrastructure needs a settlement model that is stricter than agent execution. The agent can plan, call tools, and adapt to context. Settlement needs stable inputs: a signed agreement, reserved budget, attributable evidence, deterministic release/refund checks, and receipts that can be replayed later.
Rails differ in when funds commit and when Paybond captures or refunds. For provider-specific touchpoints after funding — Stripe webhooks, Coinbase session auth, MPP recovery, and operational FAQs — see Settlement with existing payment providers.