AI and token purchases need clearer controls without turning merchant labels into a false source of certainty.
Founders need earlier runway visibility, while card controls must remain dependable when transaction categories are imperfect.
Who you’d be doing this for
“I found three new AI subscriptions in the card feed after our finance review had already started.”
Vasiliki Lopes · Founder
Runs a seed-stage software company whose engineers and contractors purchase AI tools on company cards.
What is at stake
Founders are discovering AI and token charges only after monthly card review, when controls arrive too late. You must weigh useful category visibility against the risk of putting a misleading control in front of an account owner.
Why it isn’t already fixed
Every obvious fix costs something else. That’s the part you’d have to decide.
- runway visibility vs. category certainty
- targeted controls vs. legitimate software spend
- pilot speed vs. authorization safety
- founder clarity vs. transaction-detail complexity
Why Mercury
Corporate cards and account-level spending controls make AI and token costs visible where founders already manage operating cash.
Written with these in mind
Not your kind of problem? 27 more at Mercury, or browse every organization.
This is the setup. The work is inside.
Running it puts you in the room: the full situation and its constraints, stakeholders who push back in their own words, and the decisions that are yours to make. What you produce becomes a Day One Plan — work you can show someone instead of describing.