# Builds before a card

September 12, 2026 · API

A person you just provisioned has never met Layout and has no card on file. Asking for one before they have seen a price is the wrong order of events, so production builds no longer require it, within limits.

## What changed

- **A daily no-card allowance per application.** Up to that many builds a day run for people with no card. Layout drives the real restaurant, assembles the cart and hands it back priced. Nothing is charged and nothing is owed.
- **Seeded at approval.** The allowance starts at zero and is set when your application is approved, from the volume you gave us during onboarding. It applies only to an approved application.
- **Then it asks for a card.** Once the day's allowance is spent, the next build for someone without a card comes back asking for one instead of running. A build for someone who already has a card is never counted against it.
- **The card page names you.** The Layout page where the person adds a card says that your application asked them to. The card is entered on Layout's page and held by Layout, and it never reaches your servers.
- **An optional `email`** on `POST /v1/users`. It is kept with your provisioning link, unverified, and is never written to the person's own Layout account.

```bash
curl https://api.layout.link/v1/users \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LAYOUT_SECRET" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "firstName": "Dana", "lastName": "Whitfield",
        "phone": "+19165550142", "email": "dana@example.com" }'
```

## Why it matters

The first thing a new user sees can now be their actual order at an actual price, not a card form from a company they have not heard of. The card is only needed for the step that places the order, and that step is always theirs.

## What to do

Nothing to start. If your traffic grows past the allowance, ask us to raise it. See [Building without a card](https://developer.layout.link/reference/provisioning#building-without-a-card).

## Breaking changes

None. A build for someone with a card behaves exactly as before.