How to Test Agent Payments Without Losing Real Money

If your first test of an agent's spending controls happens in production, you've already lost. Agentic payments need the same testing rigor as any other production system, arguably more since the failure mode is real money leaving real wallets.

Conto supports full testing on Tempo Testnet with free pathUSD tokens. Every policy type, every rule evaluation, every approval flow works identically to mainnet. The only difference is that no real value moves.

Five Scenarios You Should Test

Before any agent goes live, run these five scenarios. Each one validates a different part of the policy engine:

1. Approved payment - A payment within all limits. Confirms the basic flow works end to end.

2. Denied by spending limit - A payment that exceeds a per-transaction or daily cap. Validates that the agent stops when it should.

3. Requires human approval - A payment above the approval threshold. Validates the pause-and-wait flow for high-value transactions.

4. Blocked counterparty - A payment to an address not on the allowlist (or on a blocklist). Validates counterparty controls.

5. Time window restriction - A payment attempted outside business hours. Validates temporal controls.

If all five pass, your policy configuration is enforcing correctly. If any fail unexpectedly, you've found a misconfiguration before it matters.

The Testing Pattern

Each test follows the same structure:

1. Set up a policy targeting the scenario
2. Attempt a payment that should trigger the policy
3. Verify the response matches expectations (approved, denied, or requires_approval)
4. Check the dashboard for the correct audit trail

The request endpoint is the same one used in production:

curl -X POST https://conto.finance/api/sdk/payments/request \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CONTO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "amount": 10,
    "recipientAddress": "0x...",
    "purpose": "Test payment"
  }'

The response tells you what happened and why. Denied payments include a violations array with every rule that failed, so you know which policy blocked the transaction and what the threshold was.

From Test to Production

Moving from testnet to production is a configuration change, not a code change. Swap the wallet from Tempo Testnet to your production chain, review your policies one more time, and deploy.

The full testing guide with all five scenarios, policy setup commands, and a production migration checklist is in the docs: Testing Payments Safely. Quick-reference curl commands are on the Recipes page.

Related

• Zero to First Agent Payment in 5 Minutes - set up Conto and make your first payment
• Five Layers of Security for Agents That Spend Money - design a production policy stack

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Ready to test your agent's payment controls? Get started on Tempo Testnet or reach out at support@conto.finance.