Axis: Payment Infrastructure for Autonomous AI Agents

Axis is payment infrastructure built specifically for autonomous AI agents. Instead of giving an agent unrestricted access to a payment method, you provision a scoped wallet — a spending account with hard limits, an optional merchant allowlist, and a complete audit trail. This documentation covers everything a frontend developer needs to connect a client application to the Axis backend: authentication, wallet management, funding via virtual accounts, and triggering payment intents from an agent.

Quickstart

Create an account, provision a wallet, fund it, and fire your first payment in under 10 minutes.

Auth Overview

Understand the two authentication modes — developer JWTs for the dashboard and API keys for agents.

Wallets

Deep-dive into spend limits, period windows, merchant allowlists, and wallet lifecycle management.

Create a Wallet (API)

Full API reference for POST /api/wallets, including every request field and response shape.

Core concept

The central primitive in Axis is the Wallet. Here is the end-to-end flow:

You provision a wallet. As a developer or business owner, you call POST /api/wallets with the spending rules you want to enforce — a per-transaction cap, a rolling period limit, an expiry date, and an optional list of approved merchants.
You fund the wallet. Every wallet is backed by a dedicated virtual bank account. Transfer NGN to that account number and Axis automatically credits the wallet balance.
You issue an API key to your agent. The wallet creation response includes a fullKey — a plain-text secret your agent uses to authenticate payment requests. Store it in your agent’s environment; it is shown only once.
Your agent spends. The agent calls POST /api/payment-intent with the x-api-key header set to fullKey. Axis validates every request against the wallet’s rules before executing the transfer.

Developer                        Axis                          Agent
   |                               |                              |
   |-- POST /api/wallets --------> |                              |
   |<- { apiKey.fullKey,           |                              |
   |     virtualAccount.number } --|                              |
   |                               |                              |
   |-- Fund virtual account -----> |                              |
   |                               |-- credits wallet balance     |
   |                               |                              |
   |-- share fullKey ------------> | <-- x-api-key: fullKey ------|
   |                               |-- POST /api/payment-intent --|
   |                               |-- validates limits & list    |
   |                               |-- executes transfer -------> |

Data model

These are the eight core entities you will encounter throughout the API and this documentation.

Entity	Description
Wallet	A scoped spending account bound to a user, with configurable per-transaction and period spend limits, an optional expiry, and an optional merchant allowlist.
ApiKey	A hashed credential tied to exactly one wallet. The plain-text `fullKey` is returned once at creation time and is used by the agent as a bearer token.
VirtualAccount	A dedicated NGN bank account number automatically generated for each wallet. Inbound transfers to this account credit the wallet balance.
Merchant	A named payee that can be added to a wallet’s allowlist. When `useAllowlist` is `true`, the agent may only pay approved merchants.
Transaction	A record of every payment intent execution, including amount, merchant, recipient account details, status, and timestamps.
AuditEvent	An append-only log entry capturing every significant action — wallet creation, limit changes, key rotation, payment attempts — for compliance and debugging.
Settlement	A batched or real-time settlement record that tracks the movement of funds from Axis to downstream bank rails.
LedgerEntry	A double-entry bookkeeping line item recording every credit (funding) and debit (payment) against a wallet’s balance.

All monetary amounts in the Axis API are expressed in the smallest currency unit. For Nigerian Naira (NGN) that is kobo — so ₦1,500.00 is represented as 150000. Always convert before sending a request and after receiving a response.

Overview

Authentication

Core Flows

Monitoring

Axis: Payment Infrastructure for Autonomous AI Agents

Quickstart

Auth Overview

Wallets

Create a Wallet (API)

Core concept

Data model

Quickstart

Auth Overview

Wallets

Create a Wallet (API)

​Core concept

​Data model

Core concept

Data model