Wallet vs Card Balance: AgentWallet's Two-Bucket Money Model
In AgentWallet, card purchases draw from a card's own bank-held balance while payout rails draw from the wallet. Here is why the two buckets stay separate.
AgentWallet keeps two independent buckets of money. A card purchase draws from that card's own bank-held balance. A payout draws from the wallet funds assigned to payout rails. The two never cross, which keeps agent spending easy to reason about and audit.
Two buckets, two purposes
Card spending and payout spending are different activities with different risk profiles, so AgentWallet accounts for them separately. Funding or reloading a card affects the card's balance. Funding payouts affects the wallet. A single number never has to serve both jobs.
| Activity | Draws from | Independent of |
|---|---|---|
| Card purchase | That card's bank-held balance | Wallet payout funds |
| Payout on a rail | Wallet funds | Card balances |
Why keep them separate
- Clarity — you always know whether a debit was a card charge or a payout.
- Containment — a busy card program cannot drain payout funds, and vice versa.
- Auditability — the source of truth for each bucket is unambiguous.
Frequently asked questions
- If I reload a card, does that reduce my payout funds?
- No. A card's balance is independent from the wallet funds used for payout rails.
- Why not use one balance for everything?
- Separate buckets keep spending easy to reason about, prevent one activity from starving the other, and make each bucket's source of truth unambiguous.
Sources
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