Atta vs Ramp
Ramp is a corporate card and spend management platform: cards for employees, expense tracking and spend controls. Atta starts earlier. A person asks for something in chat, the agent finds it, gets the approvals your rules ask for, and pays with a single-use card capped at the approved total.
What Ramp does well
Ramp is in the corporate card and spend management category. Employees hold cards, spend is categorized and reviewed, and finance sets controls on who can spend what. For a team where people buy things themselves and finance wants visibility and control after the fact, that's a direct fit.
Where Atta differs
Atta follows a purchase from the first message to the invoice. The sequence:
- Someone asks in Slack, WhatsApp, ChatGPT, Claude or the browser.
- The agent searches the stores the workspace allows and shows the item, price and delivery date.
- A policy function decides
auto,askordenyfrom the amount, the person's role, the budget left and the workspace's rules. Code makes that call, not the model. - Over a limit, an approval chain is built and answered one approver at a time. The approval binds to the amount and the lines, and a changed cart fails the order with both figures.
- With a card program on, the agent pays with a single-use virtual card for that order, capped at the approved total on the issuer's side too. Without one, it hands over the checkout link.
- Checkout reserves the budget and payment settles it. A received invoice links to the PO it names.
The agent places the order. If placing it fails after approval, it waits for a person to press Try again, and a spend is never retried automatically.
Side by side
| Atta | Ramp | |
|---|---|---|
| Who does the buying | The agent, after approval | The cardholder |
| Cards | One single-use card per order, capped at the approved amount | Cards issued to people or for use cases |
| Before the purchase | Request, approval chain and budget check in chat | Spend limits and controls on the card |
| Sourcing | The agent searches allowed stores | Requested by the cardholder |
| Expense reports | Orders and invoices on one request row | Core of the category |
One order
Here's one order in Atta. Sam asks for a replacement 27" monitor at $290. Sam's role may approve that alone, so Sam's confirmation in chat is enough. Checkout reserves $290 against the budget, the card is issued for this order at $290, and the amount counts as spent when payment settles. Sam never holds a card number for it.
When to pick Ramp instead
Ramp is the better fit when:
- Your team buys on its own across many merchants and you want every employee to hold a card with limits.
- You need expense reporting and card management as the main job.
- Purchases are too varied for an agent to source, such as travel, software subscriptions and services.
Using both
Atta covers the purchases someone can ask for in a sentence. Other spend can stay where it is. Atta is in invite-only beta and free during the beta.
Questions
Do Atta and Ramp do the same thing?
They overlap on cards and budgets. Ramp manages cards that people spend with. Atta has the agent place the order and uses a card per order that it controls.
Does Atta replace employee cards?
No. It covers purchases someone asks the agent to make. Travel, subscriptions and ad hoc spend stay on whatever cards you use for them.
What caps an Atta card?
The approved total, set at the card issuer too. A charge above the cap is declined.
Related
- Purchase approval softwareSet approval limits per role and build approval chains by amount. Approvers answer from Slack, WhatsApp or the app, and nothing is paid until the last step clears.
- Virtual cards for purchases an AI agent makesAtta issues one single-use Stripe Issuing card per approved order, capped at the approved total and checked on every charge. The number never enters the app.
- Atta vs ZipZip routes purchase requests through intake and approvals. Atta also finds the item, pays with a capped single-use card and places the order. How they differ.