// GLOSSARY -- PAYMENTS & FINTECH

What is a Payment Intent?

1 min read Updated

A payment intent is a data object representing the intention to make a payment — including amount, currency, recipient, and metadata — created before execution, enabling validation, authorization, and policy checks before funds move.

WHY IT MATTERS

Stripe popularized the payment intent pattern: create a PaymentIntent object, confirm it, and the payment executes. This two-step process separates 'what do we want to pay?' from 'actually move the money' — enabling validation, fraud checks, and authorization between the steps.

The pattern translates perfectly to agent payments. An agent creates a payment intent ('I want to pay 50 USDC to 0x...'), which is validated against policies before execution. If the intent violates spending limits or targets a blocked address, it's rejected without any funds moving.

Payment intents also enable batching, scheduling, and human approval flows. An agent can create intents for all planned payments, a human reviews and approves the batch, and they execute together.

HOW POLICYLAYER USES THIS

PolicyLayer validates agent payment intents before execution — similar to Stripe's model. The agent creates an intent, PolicyLayer checks it against spending rules, and only approved intents proceed to on-chain execution.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How is a payment intent different from a transaction?
A payment intent is a plan — it describes what should happen but doesn't execute it. A transaction is the execution — the actual on-chain fund movement. Intents can be validated, modified, or cancelled before becoming transactions.
Why not just submit transactions directly?
The intent pattern enables pre-flight validation (check policies before execution), batching (group multiple intents), scheduling (execute later), and approval flows (human review before execution). It's safer than fire-and-forget transactions.
Do crypto payment systems use intents?
Yes. CoW Protocol uses intents for trading. x402 uses them for HTTP payments. PolicyLayer's approach mirrors the intent pattern — validating transaction intent before on-chain execution.

FURTHER READING

Enforce policies on every tool call

Intercept is the open-source MCP proxy that enforces YAML policies on AI agent tool calls. No code changes needed.

npx -y @policylayer/intercept
github.com/policylayer/intercept →
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