Spend Limits

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Interested in controlling spend velocity? Consider Authorization Rules!

For most spend velocity use-cases, Authorization Rules offer superior efficiency, customizability, and visibility into performance. Before configuring Spend Limits, consider if Authorization Rules fit your program's needs.

Card and Account Spend Limits are a feature offered by Lithic to support customers in controlling spend. Purchase requests above the configured spend limit will be declined (refunds and credits will be approved).

Note that while spend limits are enforced based on authorized and settled volume on a card, they are not recommended to be used for balance or reconciliation-level accuracy. If interested - please see our balances product for more detail or contact [email protected].

Spend limit computation is eventually consistent - which may result in exceeding the limit in edge cases.

Setting Spend Limits

Cards and Account Spend Limits can be set via Lithic’s API.

Cards support a single spend_limitwith spend_limit_duration of ANNUALLY, FOREVER, MONTHLY, or TRANSACTION. For card spend limits - a spend_limit of 0 means no spend limit is enforced.

Accounts support multiple concurrent spend limits. By default, the daily spend limit is set to $1,250.00 and the monthly spend limit is set to $5,000. A lifetime limit of 0 indicates that the lifetime limit feature is disabled. A monthly or daily limit of 0 will be enforced. Account level spend limits are only enabled for non-ASA customers.

Spend limits are rolling limits, not calendar based limits:

• Daily limits look back 24 hours from the time of authorization
• For cards, monthly limits look back ~25 days (a calendar month with a padding factor of 6 days)
  For accounts, monthly limits look back 30 days
• Annual limits look back 1 year

Get Available Spend Limits

Lithic provides an API to get the currently configured spend limit as well as the amount available to spend at any time here for cards and here for accounts.

Force Posted Charges

Spend limits cannot block force posted charges (i.e., when a merchant sends a clearing message without a prior authorization - see here for more detail.

Additionally, merchants may send an authorization for one amount before later clearing for a larger amount. Similar to force-posted charges, spend limits are not able to prevent this scenario.

As an example, for a cardholder with a spend limit of $100 remaining for a given period, a merchant may send an authorization for $90 (which would not be blocked because it is within the remaining spend limit) and subsequently clear for $110. Spend limits are not able to prevent this discrepancy.

Credits

Lithic's rolling spend limits are intended to control a card's spend velocity (the rate at which funds are spent on a given card or account) and are not recommended to be used for balance or reconciliation-level accuracy. For balance tracking, please see our balances product for more detail. Because of this, for all non-lifetime spend limit durations, credits are not factored into the spend limit calculation in any way. Credits will not "reduce" the accumulated spend to enable further spend.

As an example, for a card with a monthly spend limit of $1000:

Day 1: Purchase of $900 - Approved

Day 5: Refund of purchase from day 1, -$900 - Cleared

Day 10: Purchase of $900 - Declined

The refund (credit) processed on Day 5 does not reduce the card's rolling monthly spend limit. Non-lifetime spend limits only track the rate at which funds are spent, so the $900 purchase on day 10 is declined because it exceeds the remaining available monthly spend limit of $100.

For lifetime (FOREVER) limits, cleared credits will be factored into the spend limit calculation and increase the available spend limit.