Human-in-the-loop approval
Human-in-the-loop approval is the control that inserts a person into an otherwise automated payment flow. When an agent-initiated instruction breaches a spending limit, hits a screening or monitoring flag, or falls outside its authorization, the payment neither fails nor settles — it holds, and a human approves or denies it. The pattern preserves both properties that matter: routine payments clear at machine speed with no one in the way, and the judgment calls land with someone accountable before funds move.
By Krisan Nichani, Chief Compliance OfficerLast updated August 2026
The mechanics are queue-shaped: the instruction is accepted, no money moves, and a hold is created for review. Where several controls are breached at once — an agent limit and a customer-set cap, say — each gate’s owner clears their own, and the payment releases only when every hold is resolved. Review has to happen before settlement to be worth anything; an approval that reverses a payment after the fact is an incident report, not a control.
On Infinite, flagged payments stop before funds move and route to human review — that is how compliance review works on the network generally, not an agent-specific bolt-on. Infinite Agents assembles the case for the reviewer and keeps a human analyst on every compliance decision.
Frequently asked questions
When should an agent payment require human approval?
At the boundaries: amounts past a limit, first payments to a counterparty, instructions outside the agent’s authorization, and anything screening or monitoring flags. Routine in-bounds payments should clear untouched — an approval queue full of normal traffic trains reviewers to rubber-stamp.
Does human review slow agentic payments down?
Only the exceptions. The design goal is that the overwhelming share of instructions clears at machine speed, and the held few are the ones a business genuinely wants a person to see. The alternative — no path to a human — means edge cases either hard-fail or settle wrongly.
What does the reviewer see when a payment holds?
The case, not just the alert: which agent initiated the payment, under whose authority, the counterparty and its screening state, which rule was breached, and history for context. On Infinite, Infinite Agents assembles that file so the analyst decides instead of investigates. Infinite Agents
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