How to answer “who approved this payment?”
This is the first question sponsor banks and auditors ask. If your answer involves digging through logs and asking teammates, you have an evidence gap.
The problem
Programmable payments execute fast — often automatically, driven by agents or automated rules. When a reviewer asks who or what approved a specific payment, the answer is usually scattered across application logs, Slack threads, and memory. The approval happened, but the evidence trail doesn't exist in a structured, reviewable format.
This matters because sponsor banks, internal auditors, and enterprise partners don't just want to know the payment went through. They want to see the approval chain: who authorized it, under what policy, at what time, and whether the required checks ran first.
The answer Kontext gives you
Every payment decision includes a structured approval chain with timestamps, authority level, and policy reference.
Amount
$48,200 USDC
Type
Vendor payout
Corridor
US → EU (Base)
Timestamp
2026-03-21 09:14 UTC
Initiator type
AI agent
Agent ID
treasury-rebalancer-v2
Instruction ref
payout batch #A-449
SDN v2026.03.21 · Checked at 09:14:02 UTC · 38ms
How Kontext captures approvals
- Records whether the approver was a human operator, automated system, or multi-step escalation
- Captures the policy version in force at decision time — not a retroactive guess
- Links the approval to screening results and compliance checks that ran first
- Produces a tamper-evident record that proves the approval chain hasn't been modified