> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.anchorage.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Overview > Know exactly what your agents spend your money on, with rules defined by you and enforced deterministically by Anchorage. Know exactly what your agents spend your money on, with rules defined by you and enforced deterministically by Anchorage. Anchorage Agentic Banking gives each of your agents a budget and deterministic guardrails. Agents spend that budget with any service from our constantly growing, vetted, compliant merchant list. Before any money moves, Anchorage checks that the payment falls within your defined rules. These checks run in a deterministic layer that agents can't work around. You see every payment, and you can stop any agent at any time. You hold a USD balance on each network you use, and we handle the chains and payment protocols under the hood, picking a safe way to pay each merchant. Your funds are held in custody at Anchorage Digital, America's first federally chartered crypto bank. ## Why agents pay on-chain Agents buy in small amounts, often a single API call for a few cents. A card payment carries a fixed fee that's usually bigger than a purchase that size, and it needs a person to sign up, enter card details, and get through a checkout. On-chain payments are the right solution for this problem. * **Sized for one request.** Settlement costs are small enough that paying a few cents for one call makes sense. * **Part of the request itself.** The merchant answers with a price, and the agent pays and gets its response in the same exchange, with no account, checkout, or card number. * **Settled in seconds, at any hour.** No batches, cutoffs, or banking days. * **Final once settled.** There are no chargebacks, which is why you need Anchorage's banking and compliance infrastructure, to make sure your agent spends only what you allow it to. ## Why Anchorage Agentic Banking > **Pay per request, not per subscription** > > Agents pay for exactly what they use, one call at a time, instead of you signing up, prepaying, and managing a key for every service. Payments normally settle in seconds. > **Inference, paid per request** > > Use Anchorage for inference too. Text, image, video, and audio models, with each paid request drawn from your agent's budget and no provider account or subscription. > **Works with the agents you already run** > > Any MCP client, including the tested clients in [Connect an MCP client](https://docs.anchorage.com/agentic-banking/guides/connect-an-mcp-client.md). Agents on a server with no browser connect with an API key. > **Agents find what they need** > > An agent describes what it's looking for, like web search or image generation, and gets back matching services from the catalog, with the endpoints to call. ## How it works **1. Your organization adds funds** An org admin deposits from the **Deposit** page. The page shows the conversion rate before you send, and the funds land in your USD balance. **2. An admin sets budgets** A budget caps what each member's agents can spend, and can limit which merchants they pay. **3. You connect an agent** Create an agent and connect it to the client it runs in. **4. The agent pays** It pays for an API call or a model call from its budget. Anchorage checks the payment, settles it, and hands the merchant's response back to the agent. ## What an agent can do * **Pay merchants on the list.** APIs, data feeds, and services that charge per request, each reviewed by Anchorage before agents can pay it. A budget's merchant allowlist can narrow which ones an agent pays. * **Run models on its budget.** Text, image, video, and audio models through one API key. See [Call a text model](https://docs.anchorage.com/agentic-banking/guides/call-a-text-model.md). * **Find services to pay.** Search the catalog of services, even before signing in. See [Discovery](https://docs.anchorage.com/agentic-banking/concepts/discovery.md). * **Check what it can spend.** Its budgets and what's left on them. ## What stays in your control | Control | What it does | | - | - | | Budget | The most each member's agents can spend, set by an org admin | | Merchant allowlist | Which merchants a budget can pay | | Daily cap | Set by Anchorage for every agent. See [Limits](https://docs.anchorage.com/agentic-banking/reference/limits.md) | | Per-payment limit | Set by Anchorage for every payment. See [Limits](https://docs.anchorage.com/agentic-banking/reference/limits.md) | | Pause or revoke | Stops an agent immediately, from its page | ## Words you'll see | Term | Meaning | | - | - | | Organization | Your company on Anchorage Agentic Banking. Members, agents, and the balance belong to it. | | Agent | An AI agent you've connected. It acts for you and pays from its budget. | | Account | Your organization's USD balance. Mainnet and testnet each have their own. | | Budget | A spending limit agents draw on. | | Merchant | A service an agent pays, including the model provider for paid inference. | > **[Quickstart](https://docs.anchorage.com/agentic-banking/quickstart.md)** > > Sign in, connect an agent, and make its first paid call. > **[How payments work](https://docs.anchorage.com/agentic-banking/concepts/payments.md)** > > What happens between your agent's request and the merchant's response. ## Related topics - [Overview](https://docs.anchorage.com/knowledge-base/platform/developers/move-money/overview.md)