How do I handle failed AI agent payments?
When an AI agent payment fails, MoltPe returns a structured error code — INSUFFICIENT_BALANCE, POLICY_VIOLATION, RECIPIENT_NOT_ALLOWED, RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED, NETWORK_MISMATCH, etc. Your agent reads the error and chooses a recovery path: retry with exponential backoff for transient errors, request a policy adjustment for limits, surface the error to the human for unrecoverable cases, fall back to a different rail if available. Log every attempt. MoltPe never silently drops a payment. MoltPe is AI-native payment infrastructure that gives AI agents isolated wallets with programmable spending policies for autonomous USDC stablecoin transactions.
The short version
- Read the error code: Every failure includes a machine-readable code and a human-readable message. Branch your agent's logic on the code, not the message.
- Retry only transient errors: Network timeouts, RPC hiccups, and rate limits are safe to retry. Policy violations are not — retrying those is just spam.
- Always log: Persist the attempt, the error, and the chosen recovery path. Most "mysterious" agent bugs are silent failures someone forgot to log.
In more detail
The first principle is that MoltPe never partial-confirms a payment. Either the on-chain transfer settles and you get a transaction hash back, or the request fails with a typed error and zero funds move. There's no "pending forever" state to reason about, no idempotency footgun where retrying might double-charge. That removes most of the failure-handling complexity that traditional payment rails force on you.
Within failures, the codes split into three groups. Transient errors (RPC_TIMEOUT, RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED, NETWORK_MISMATCH when the chain is congested) deserve exponential backoff — try after 1s, 2s, 4s, then give up. Policy errors (POLICY_VIOLATION, RECIPIENT_NOT_ALLOWED, DAILY_CAP_EXCEEDED) are not transient — the agent should stop, log, and either escalate to a human or pick a different action. Funding errors (INSUFFICIENT_BALANCE) sit in between — depending on your setup, the agent may trigger a top-up flow or fall back to a free path.
The pattern that scales is: a single payment helper inside your agent that wraps every call, classifies the error, applies the right strategy, and writes a structured log line. Each failure mode tested once at the helper level keeps your agent loops clean and your incidents debuggable. If you find yourself adding ad-hoc try/catch around every payment call, refactor first, ship second.
Related questions
- AI agent spending policy explained
- How do AI agents handle refunds?
- Blog: Why developers choose MoltPe for AI agent payments
- Blog: MoltPe developer experience deep dive
About MoltPe
MoltPe is AI-native payment infrastructure that gives AI agents isolated wallets with programmable spending policies for autonomous USDC stablecoin transactions. Live on Polygon PoS, Base, and Tempo.