Confirming and paying

Nothing is ordered and nothing is charged until you confirm. This page is what that sentence actually means, because it is the sentence everything else rests on.

The confirmation

When your order is ready to place, Layout shows you a confirmation with the restaurant, every item, and the total you will pay. Your assistant is required to pass that to you exactly as we wrote it, not to summarise it in its own words.

Saying yes to that confirmation is what authorizes the money. Not asking for an order, not building one, not the assistant deciding you meant yes.

The code

You can also ask for a six digit code on every order, texted to your number. New accounts start without it, so confirming is one tap. With it on, you give the code to your assistant and it authorizes exactly one order at exactly one amount. If the total changes after the code is issued, that code no longer works.

Turn codes on or off in your account settings. The setting covers smaller orders only: past fifty dollars a code is required whatever it says.

What you are charged

Two things can appear:

• The food. Whatever the restaurant charges for the order you approved, including their tax and any of their fees.
• A Layout ordering fee on the free plan, per order. Layout One removes it.

The total on your confirmation is the total. If a restaurant's own checkout adds something after that point, and occasionally one tries, the order does not go through silently at a higher number.

Your daily limit

Layout will not spend more than your daily limit on your behalf, across every order, in every assistant, on any given day. It defaults to fifty dollars and you can set it between fifteen and one hundred and fifty at account.layout.link.

The limit is checked on our servers at the moment of the charge. It is not a setting your assistant can read around, and no conversation can raise it. If an order would breach it, it is refused and we tell you why.

The largest order Layout will place

Fifty dollars per order, today. That is a ceiling on us rather than a judgement about you: the card rail is early, and we would rather refuse an order than place one we cannot stand behind. An order over it is refused before your bank is ever asked, and we say so instead of failing quietly. Your daily limit sits on top of this, not instead of it.

The hold on your card

When an order is ready to place, Layout authorizes your card for the total you confirmed and nothing more. That is a hold rather than a charge, and you may see it as pending before the food is ordered.

• The order is placed. The hold becomes the charge, at the total you approved.
• The order provably fails. The hold is released and nothing lands on your statement.
• We cannot prove either way. The hold is left alone and a person looks at it, because guessing here is how somebody gets charged for food they never got or gets told an order failed that did not. An uncaptured hold falls off on its own within about a week.

Who your card is shown to

The restaurant never sees your card. Layout pays them with a Layout virtual card, so your number is never typed into a merchant's checkout and no restaurant ever holds it.

The card a restaurant charges carries a small allowance over the total you approved, because their own tax line is added by their own checkout and a card authorized for exactly the cart total would decline at the last step. Your hold is not padded to match it: that stays the total you confirmed.

Your real card number is not on our servers either. Card data covers where it actually lives.

If a charge looks wrong

Start with your receipt, which itemises what the restaurant charged. Then the help center: how and when you are charged. If you still think it is wrong, reply to the receipt email and a person will look.