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Who pays whom
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Halvern Robotics’ procurement agent buys $77.04 of office supplies at Ream & Rule. The card is a single-use commercial virtual card on Halvern’s own Stripe Issuing account, and Ream & Rule takes the payment on Stripe at its standard pricing. This page follows the $77.04 through every party. Every rate is a public list price, and every figure other than the order itself is an estimate.
The order
| Item | Unit price | Quantity | Subtotal |
|---|---|---|---|
| A5 ruled notebooks, 3-pack | $9.99 | 5 | $49.95 |
| Standard staples, box of 5,000 | $3.49 | 1 | $3.49 |
| Desk stapler | $18.60 | 1 | $18.60 |
| Standard shipping (free from $100) | $5.00 | 1 | $5.00 |
| Sales tax | $0.00 | ||
| Total | $77.04 |
Halvern’s policy lets the agent spend up to $500 a payment and $2,000 a month and asks a person above $150, so this order is allowed without an approval. Enruta issues a mandate and a single-use card capped at $77.04, and answers the card’s real-time authorization against the mandate. The card is assumed to be Visa business credit, card not present, at the lowest spend tier, because the tier follows the cardholder’s yearly spend and a single-use card spends little.
Every movement of money
| # | Who pays | Who receives | Amount | How it is computed | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Halvern, from its Stripe Issuing balance | Stripe, through Visa | $77.04 | The order total, captured when the order ships | The order |
| 2 | Stripe, as acquirer | The card’s issuing bank | $2.14, estimate | Interchange for Visa business credit, Spend Tier I: 2.65 % × $77.04 + $0.10 | Visa interchange fees, 2026-04-18 edition |
| 3 | Stripe | Visa | About $0.13, estimate | Network fees, about 0.14 % × $77.04 + $0.0195 | Brookside Payments, 2026-07-27 (secondhand) |
| 4 | Stripe | Ream & Rule | $74.51, estimate | $77.04 less Stripe’s fee of 2.9 % × $77.04 + $0.30 = $2.53 | Stripe pricing, read 2026-09-13 |
| 5 | Kept by Stripe | About $0.26, estimate | $77.04 − $74.51 − $2.14 − $0.13, before Stripe’s own costs | Rows 2 to 4 | |
| 6 | Halvern | Stripe Issuing | $0.10 | One virtual card | Stripe Issuing pricing, read 2026-09-13 |
| 7 | Halvern | Enruta | $0.05, or $0 | One mandate: $0.05 above the Developer plan’s 5,000 a month; $0 inside an allowance or on Free. Invoiced monthly, never taken from the payment | Enruta pricing |
| 8 | Ream & Rule | Enruta | About $0.02, or $0 | Storefront is $499 a month per domain with 25,000 agent orders, about $0.02 an order when the allowance is used; $0 on Accept | Enruta pricing |
| 9 | The person using the agent | Claude.ai | $0 per purchase | The agent runs on Claude.ai, which charges a subscription, not a fee per purchase | Anthropic pricing, read 2026-09-13 |
Check: $74.51 + $2.14 + $0.13 + $0.26 = $77.04. The issuing bank shares its interchange with the card program by contract. Stripe does not publish the share, and shares only past a volume threshold, so on standard pricing Halvern receives none of it.
What each party pays and earns
| Party | Pays on this order | Receives on this order | How it earns |
|---|---|---|---|
| User: Halvern Robotics | $77.04 for the goods; $0.10 for the card; $0 to $0.05 to Enruta | The supplies without approving each order, and a record of the payment that verifies offline | It earns nothing on the payment; what it buys from Enruta is control and evidence |
| Agent platform: Claude.ai | $0 | $0 | Subscriptions and API usage, not a share of purchases |
| Merchant: Ream & Rule | $2.53 to Stripe; about $0.02 to Enruta on Storefront, $0 on Accept | $74.51 | Its margin on the goods |
| PSP and acquirer: Stripe | $2.14 of interchange; about $0.13 of network fees | About $0.26, before its costs | The gap between its bundled price and interchange plus network fees, and dispute and other fees |
| Card network: Visa | About $0.13 on the acquiring side | Fees on volume and on transactions, from acquirers and issuers; it publishes interchange but does not receive it | |
| Issuing bank and card program | $2.14, shared by contract; $0.10 for the card | Interchange and card fees | |
| Enruta | $0 to $0.05 from Halvern; $0 to about $0.02 from Ream & Rule | A price per mandate, per agent order and per dispute packet, and platform licences; never a part of the payment |
A return of $19.98
Two packs of notebooks arrive damaged, and Ream & Rule refunds 2 × $9.99 = $19.98 to the original card. Shipping is refunded only with the whole order.
- Halvern gets the $19.98 back, although the single-use card is already closed. The $0.10 card fee is not refunded.
- Ream & Rule pays no fee to refund, but Stripe does not return the original $2.53, so the $57.06 it keeps carries the whole fee, 4.43 %.
- The issuing bank pays about $0.47 of interchange back to Stripe, at Visa’s refund rate for business cards (2.35 % × $19.98). On bundled pricing Stripe keeps it; processors commonly do (secondhand).
- Enruta adds and refunds nothing: a return is neither a new mandate nor a new agent order. Under Halvern’s policy the $19.98 goes back into the monthly allowance, which is a limit, not money.
| Party | After the purchase | After the return |
|---|---|---|
| Halvern | Paid $77.04 | Paid $57.06 net |
| Ream & Rule | Received $74.51 | Received $54.53 net |
| Stripe | About $0.26 | About $0.73 |
| Visa | About $0.13 | About $0.13 |
| Issuing side | $2.14 | $1.67 |
| Total | $77.04 | $57.06 |
Network fees on the refund are not counted. Had the purchase been disputed instead, Stripe would charge Ream & Rule $15 when the dispute arrives and $15 more to counter it by hand, returned if won; Enruta’s dispute packet is $5 beyond the plan’s allowance.
The same order on a consumer’s credit card
A person’s own agent buys the same basket with the person’s Visa consumer credit card without rewards. Interchange is 1.89 % × $77.04 + $0.10 = $1.56 (Visa, 2026-04-18 edition). Ream & Rule still pays Stripe $2.53 and receives $74.51, and Stripe keeps about $0.84. The person pays the card bill; the agent’s developer pays Enruta for the mandate ($0 to $0.05); the person pays Enruta nothing. How the credential reaches the merchant, a single-use card, a network token or a Stripe Shared Payment Token, does not change the interchange.
How the card changes the split
On Stripe’s standard pricing the merchant pays $2.53 whatever the card. What changes is how that fee divides.
| Card, not present | Interchange, estimate | Kept by Stripe, estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Visa business credit, Spend Tier I (this example) | $2.14 | $0.26 |
| Visa business credit, Spend Tier V | $2.41 | −$0.01 |
| Visa purchasing or corporate card | $2.18 | $0.22 |
| Mastercard small business credit, Level 1 | $2.14 | $0.25 |
| Visa consumer credit, no rewards | $1.56 | $0.84 |
| Visa Signature Preferred | $2.03 | $0.37 |
| Mastercard World Elite | $2.10 | $0.29 |
| Visa debit capped by Regulation II | $0.26 | $2.15 |
A negative figure is what list prices give: on bundled pricing the acquirer, not the merchant, absorbs a higher card level. “Kept by Stripe” is list-price arithmetic before Stripe’s own costs and any network incentives, not its profit.
The same order on other PSPs
| PSP and list pricing | Merchant pays, business credit | Merchant pays, consumer credit without rewards |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe standard, 2.9 % + $0.30 | $2.53 | $2.53 |
| Adyen, $0.13 + interchange + network fees + 0.60 % | About $2.86 | About $2.28 |
| PayPal standard card, 2.99 % + $0.49 | $2.79 | $2.79 |
| Braintree standard, 2.89 % + $0.29 | $2.52 | $2.52 |
Large merchants negotiate prices that are not public; these are list prices.
What Enruta charges, and what it never does
- Per mandate on the agent side: 500 a month free, then $0.05, $0.03 or $0.02 above the Developer, Scale and Vendor allowances. A denial or a step-up is free.
- Per agent order on the merchant side: Accept is free; Storefront is $499 a month per domain with 25,000 agent orders.
- $5 per dispute packet beyond the allowance.
- Platforms pay by records, in volume.
- At list prices, the Developer overage and a fully used Storefront allowance come to about $0.07 on this order, invoiced monthly and never deducted from the $77.04. With only 1,000 agent orders a month, the Storefront price comes to about $0.50 an order.
Every payment has its own money split: GET /v0/payment-requests/{id}/economics, GET /v0/sellers/orders/{id}/economics or get_economics (Money split).
Sources
| Source | Publisher | Version or date read |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Stripe | Read 2026-09-13 |
| Issuing pricing | Stripe | Read 2026-09-13 |
| Visa USA Interchange Reimbursement Fees | Visa | 2026-04-18 edition |
| 2026–2027 U.S. Region Interchange Programs and Rates | Mastercard | Effective 2026-04-17 |
| Credit card assessment fees | Brookside Payments, secondhand | Updated 2026-07-27 |
| Pricing | Adyen | Read 2026-09-13 |
| Business fees, Braintree fees | PayPal | Updated 2026-09-01 and 2026-05-07 |
| Regulation II, 12 CFR 235.3 | Federal Reserve, via Cornell LII | Read 2026-09-13 |
| Claude pricing | Anthropic | Read 2026-09-13 |
| Pricing | Enruta | Current |