Strict cards

Cardboard provides an opt-in feature named "strict cards", which when enabled will prevent Cardboard's virtual cards from being incorrectly used. For example, if a card dedicated to Anthropic's Claude is used to pay for OpenAI's ChatGPT, Cardboard will block the payment from going through. You can read more about why you might want to prevent such payments in How to handle wrong payments and incorrect card use in Cardboard.

How to enable strict cards?

You can enable "strict cards" by navigating to Organization > Settings and selecting the "Enable strict cards" checkbox. Once selected, all existing and future cards will have strict cards mode enabled and will block wrong payments from going through. Subscription owners are notified by email whenever a card is incorrectly used.

What to consider before enabling strict cards?

Note that the classification system is not perfect and might at times identify valid payments as potential incorrect use of the card. For example, a service might have rebranded without the system having detected it, and the first payment after the rebrand might be flagged until the system learns about the rebrand. Feel free to contact support if you think you have identified a payment being flagged incorrectly.

When Cardboard blocks a payment to an unrecognized merchant, the merchant will most often attempt to charge the same amount on the card again at regular intervals over the ensuing days. Contact Cardboard support to reverse any incorrect blocks, and the payment should go through without any service disruptions.

How to disable strict cards for a specific subscription?

While generally not recommended, there are cases where you might want to allow a specific card to be used more freely.

Admins can disable strict cards for an individual subscription. Navigate to the subscription in question, click the three-dot menu next to the card, and select "Disable strict cards". The card can then be used for payments beyond what the subscription is meant for, while strict cards remains enabled for all other cards in your organization. To turn it back on, open the same three-dot menu and select "Enable strict cards".

Keep in mind that payments made with this card will no longer be blocked if they don't match the subscription, so the benefits described in How to handle wrong payments and incorrect card use in Cardboard (accurate cost attribution, receipt matching, and automated accounting) may degrade for that card.