Known Limitations

CartAI is built to make agentic commerce as seamless and broadly applicable as possible. That said, like any powerful system operating at the intersection of AI, payments, and live merchant websites, there are boundaries worth knowing before you build.

This page documents current limitations transparently — along with what's coming, and who to reach out to when your use case sits at the edge.

1. US-Based Retailers Only

CartAI agents currently operate exclusively on US-based retail websites. International merchant sites — including UK, EU, Canadian, and APAC retailers — are not supported at this time.

• Use US Phone numbers during test
• Use US Shipping Addresses during the test
• Use US Merchants/Retailers during the test.

Coming soon: Expansion to additional geographies is on the roadmap. If you have a specific international market in mind, reach out — it helps us prioritise.

2. Some Retailers May Restrict Agentic Purchases

Not every retailer permits automated checkout flows. Some restrict agentic purchases due to inventory management policies, anti-bot measures, high-demand product controls, or platform-specific terms of service.

CartAI has partnered with Cloudflare, Humane, Skyfire and Fingerprint to handle bot detection and ensure agents are recognised as legitimate, credentialed purchasers rather than malicious automation. This covers the vast majority of merchants. However, a subset of retailers — particularly those selling limited-edition products, high-value goods, or operating under strict purchase policies — may still block or throttle agentic checkout flows regardless of these partnerships.

If your use case involves a specific merchant that is experiencing blocks or restrictions, get in touch . We work directly with retailers to enable agentic commerce on a case-by-case basis and can often find a path forward.

3. Supported Payment Cards

CartAI currently supports the following card networks for agentic payments in Production:

4. Bulk Order Placement & Queue Behaviour

CartAI agents execute checkouts in the background — one agent per merchant, per task. If your platform sends a high volume of checkout requests in a short window, tasks will be queued and executed as agent capacity becomes available. There is no immediate failure for bulk submissions, but execution time will increase as the queue depth grows.

What this means in practice:

• Tasks submitted during a high-volume burst will not fail — they will move through QUEUED → STARTED → IN-PROGRESS in order as capacity frees up.
• Do not assume a task is stuck if it stays in QUEUED longer than usual during peak submission periods. Monitor via webhooks or GET /checkout/{taskId}.
• If your use case involves scheduled bulk purchasing, restocking automation, or batch order workflows — contact us to discuss dedicated capacity options.

5. Guest Checkout by Default

All CartAI checkouts are currently executed as guest checkouts. The agent does not log into a merchant account on the customer's behalf — it completes the purchase as a guest using the provided customer details and payment credentials.

What this means:

• Orders will not appear in the customer's merchant account order history.
• Loyalty points, member discounts, or account-specific pricing will not be applied.
• Saved addresses and payment methods from the customer's merchant account are not used.

Login-based checkout is supported in CartAI's infrastructure — however, it is currently enabled on a per-customer, opt-in basis at the Customer's request. If your integration depends on logged-in checkout for a specific merchant (for loyalty, member pricing, or account order tracking), reach out and we can explore enabling it for you.

6. Credits & Usage Limits

Every CartAI account is provisioned with a standard credit allocation — enough to comfortably run at least 10 complete checkout tasks for testing and integration validation.

Credits are consumed per checkout step. Each agent action — navigating a page, selecting a variant, entering payment details — draws from your credit balance. More complex checkouts (multi-merchant, multi-SKU) consume more credits than simple single-product flows.

If you exhaust your credits before completing your integration or need a higher limit for load testing, you can request additional credits directly through the CartAI Portal. Requests are typically reviewed within one business day.

7. Use Test Cards Until Production Mode is Activated

Until your CartAI account has Production mode activated, credit card details submitted through the API are not tokenized or encrypted at the same level as a live production environment. This means real card numbers could be exposed in logs, request traces, or internal systems during sandbox testing.

⚠️

Never use a real credit card in sandbox or while your account is in pre-production. Treat this the same way you would treat any development environment — real financial credentials do not belong there.

Use the test cards provided in the CartAI Portal for all checkout testing. Test cards simulate the full payment flow — including approval, decline, and retry scenarios — without touching real payment infrastructure.

Test Card:

For development and testing, you can use the following Sample test card:

• Card Number: 4242 4242 4242 4242
• Expiry Date: 12/34
• CVV: 444

Once your integration is complete and your account is reviewed and approved for Production, CartAI will activate Production mode on your account. From that point, all payment credentials are fully tokenized and handled under production-grade security standards.

Have a Use Case at the Edge?

If something in your integration doesn't fit neatly within these boundaries — an unsupported merchant, an unusual card type, a bulk workflow, or a retailer that requires logged-in checkout — don't assume it isn't possible.

CartAI is composable by design, and many edge cases have a path forward. Reach out at [email protected] and we'll work through it with you.