Spendesk cards are created from approved spend requests, and every payment made with them is recorded as a transaction — settled, or declined. Through the API you can:

• follow the cards — balances, limits, subscription budgets, who holds them, why one is blocked;
• follow the requests behind them — what is waiting for approval, and who has to approve it;
• follow card payments — settled transactions for reconciliation, declined ones to help cardholders.

📘

Experimental

Card, request and transaction endpoints are experimental: they may still change. Request access from your CSM or at [email protected] — see Getting access.

Before you start

• Scopes: experimental:card:read for cards, experimental:request:read for requests, experimental:transaction:read for transactions. All these endpoints only read data.
• With an organisation-level key, send the X-Company-Id header on every call — see Organisation-level access.

How it fits together

1. An employee asks for a card with a spend request — a single purchase, a subscription, a multi-use card, or a top-up.
2. Once approved, the request becomes a card.
3. Each payment with the card is a transaction: settled when it goes through, declined when it does not.
4. Settled payments then become payables, prepared and exported like any other spend — see What is Spend Data?.

🚧

Amounts are not in the same unit everywhere

Endpoint	Fields	Unit
Cards	availableBalance, spendingLimit, subscriptionBudget.*, request.amount	Major units — 375 is 375.00 EUR
Requests	requestedAmount	Smallest unit — 25000 is 250.00 EUR
Requests	minAmount, maxAmount filters	Major units, in the company's currency
Transactions	amountBilled, amountDeclared, fxFeeAmount	Smallest unit — 15000 is 150.00 EUR

1. Cards

Get Cards lists the company's cards, 30 per page, filtered by type (single_purchase, subscription, physical, multi_use), status, userId (the holder), or creation date (createdAfter, createdBefore, as YYYY-MM-DD):

curl -G https://public-api.spendesk.com/v1/cards \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  --data-urlencode "type=subscription" \
  --data-urlencode "status=Active"

The status filter is case-sensitive and takes the values the cards return — Active or Blocked, not active.

Each card carries:

Get a Card returns one card by ID.

• Why is a card blocked? Get a Card Blocking History lists every block, past and active, with its initiator (user, support, scheduledDeactivation, automatic, controlRule, internal); endedAt is null while it is active. A card can be blocked without a reason in either place — a single-purchase card after its payment, for example — so don't rely on them alone.
• Where is a physical card? Get a Card Order returns the shipping state (to_pickup, to_ship, shipped), tracking link and dates. It returns 404 when the card was never physically ordered.

2. Requests

Get Requests lists spend requests, 30 per page, filtered by type, state (pending, approved, refused, cancelled…), requesterId, supplierId, creation date, or amount (minAmount, maxAmount, in major units). Add withApproval=true to see the approval chain:

curl -G https://public-api.spendesk.com/v1/requests \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  --data-urlencode "state=pending" \
  --data-urlencode "withApproval=true"

{
  "approval": {
    "isAutoApproved": false,
    "autoApprovalReason": null,
    "steps": [
      {
        "state": "current",
        "approvers": [{ "type": "user", "userId": "pmhsuj1ddcy562", "actingUserId": null, "isDelegated": false }],
        "decision": null
      }
    ]
  }
}

The step whose state is current is the one being waited on; its approvers are who has to act. Get Users turns their IDs into names. Each request also has an appUrl that opens it in Spendesk. Get a Request returns one request.

3. Card transactions

Settled and declined payments come from two endpoints that do not work the same way:

Both filter by startDate, endDate (YYYY-MM-DD, end day included), userId and cardId:

curl -G https://public-api.spendesk.com/v1/transactions/successful \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  --data-urlencode "startDate=2026-08-01" \
  --data-urlencode "endDate=2026-08-31"

• For a full view of a period, call both endpoints and merge the results.
• Never add up amounts in different currencies: amountDeclared is in the merchant's currency, which varies from one payment to the next.
• Helping a cardholder with a declined payment: reason says why, remediation what to do next.
• The older GET /v1/transactions endpoint is deprecated: use the two above.

With an AI assistant

Connected through the Spendesk MCP server, an assistant can answer these questions for you:

How many spend requests are waiting for approval, how long have they been waiting, and who requested them?

Which card payments were declined last month, and why?

Good to know

• Cards and transactions are not the accounting record. For bookkeeping, use payables — see What is Spend Data? and Exporting accounting data.
• Check the unit of every amount — the table in How it fits together.
• Data may be cached for a short period: a payment or request made a moment ago may appear a little later.

Last checked against the Spendesk demo environment on 29 September 2026.