title: Quickstart description: "Get your first agent transacting in 5 minutes — wallet, claim, fund, pay."

By the end of this page you'll have:

1. A CardZero wallet (smart contract on Base mainnet)
2. A human Owner account that controls spending rules
3. An API Key your agent uses to pay
4. A first 1 USDC test payment confirmed on-chain

Total time: about 5 minutes + waiting for USDC to arrive.

Step 1 — Create the wallet (agent does this)

Hit the API. No authentication needed; this is the only unauthenticated write endpoint and it's heavily rate-limited.

curl -X POST https://api.cardzero.ai/v1/wallets \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "My first agent",
    "version": "v3"
  }'

Response (HTTP 201):

{
  "id": "wallet_7370ee785775",
  "chainAddress": "0xa1f2…70D0",
  "claimKey": "czk_a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8_i9j0k1l2…",
  "name": "My first agent",
  "status": "pending",
  "version": "v3"
}

Save these:

• id — your CARDZERO_WALLET_ID
• chainAddress — where to send USDC
• claimKey — give this to your human Owner. One-time, 7-day expiry.

The wallet is lazy-deployed: no contract on-chain yet, address is CREATE2-deterministic. The contract gets deployed (and gas paid) when the Owner claims.

Step 2 — Claim the wallet (Owner does this)

The agent tells the Owner:

Hi! I created a CardZero wallet. To activate it:

1. Go to https://cardzero.ai/claim
2. Enter this claim key: czk_a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8_…
3. Set up a username and password
4. Send some USDC to 0xa1f2…70D0

When you're done, paste back the API Key the dashboard gives you.

The dashboard at /claim:

• Validates the claim key (checks expiry, not-already-used)
• Deploys the smart contract (~$0.0001 gas, paid by CardZero)
• Creates the Owner account
• Generates an API Key (czapi_…)
• Auto-grants a 30-day session key (the agent never sees this — handled internally)

Step 3 — Fund the wallet

Three ways to send USDC:

Step 4 — Set spending rules (optional but recommended)

In the dashboard wallet detail page, configure:

| Rule | Example | Effect | | --- | --- | --- | | Per-tx limit | 5 USDC | Single payment can't exceed this | | Daily limit | 50 USDC | All payments combined per UTC day | | Address whitelist | [0x1234…, 0x5678…] | Agent can only pay these addresses | | Expiry | 2026-12-31 | Agent loses ability to pay after this date | | Freeze | toggle | Stop all payments instantly |

Rules are enforced on-chain, in the smart contract. Even CardZero can't bypass them.

Step 5 — First payment (agent does this)

The Owner gave you an API key like czapi_a1b2c3d4_secretsecretsecretsecret…. Set environment variables:

export CARDZERO_API_KEY="czapi_a1b2c3d4_…"
export CARDZERO_WALLET_ID="wallet_7370ee785775"

Send a test payment (1 USDC to a self-controlled address):

curl -X POST https://api.cardzero.ai/v1/payments \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CARDZERO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "to": "0xYourTestAddress…",
    "amount": "1.0",
    "currency": "USDC",
    "memo": "First test"
  }'

Response (HTTP 200 once on-chain):

{
  "id": "pay_abc123def456",
  "txHash": "0x…",
  "status": "confirmed",
  "amount": "1.0",
  "feeAmount": "0.02",
  "to": "0xYourTestAddress…"
}

Click txHash on Basescan — you'll see the transfer plus a 0.02 USDC fee transfer to CardZero treasury.

Next steps