The Payhawk MCP lets you connect your Payhawk account to the AI Assistant your company uses, such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Codex.
You can ask a question in plain language, and the AI Assistant will read and act on your live Payhawk data with your own permissions. For example, in Claude, you can ask "Which of my expenses are missing a receipt?" to get the list, pulled live from Payhawk. Then, you can type "Remind the owners to add them" and the AI Assistant will do it.
What is an MCP?
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that connects an AI Assistant to a real system such as Payhawk. Instead of copying data into a chat by hand, you connect Payhawk one time, and the AI Assistant can then look up information and take actions for you.
What makes the Payhawk MCP different
Most MCP connectors offer read-only lookups. The Payhawk MCP does more.
The following table lists the major capabilities the Payhawk MCP provides.
Capability | What it is |
|---|---|
Your AI Assistant acts as you | You sign in with your Payhawk login, and your AI Assistant sees exactly what you see in Payhawk and nothing more. For example, a Payhawk Employee sees only their own expenses and cards, whereas a Payhawk Administrator sees the whole account. |
Your AI Assistant reads and acts | You can look up data as well as recode expenses, approve items, freeze cards, and create purchase orders. Every change shows a preview first and waits for your confirmation. |
Longer analyses run in the background | Payhawk hands off bigger questions, such as analyzing a quarter of spend, to an AI agent and notifies you when the answer is ready, avoiding timeouts. |
Default playbooks that follow Payhawk procedures | The default playbooks walk your AI Assistant through multi-step finance jobs, such as month-end close, the way your team does them. You can trigger the default playbooks Payhawk provides conversationally in the chat. The MCP then acts through your AI Assistant on your Payhawk data. |
Custom playbooks that follow your company needs | You can create, trigger, and edit your own playbooks conversationally in the chat, to meet your specific company needs. Based on your live data in Payhawk, your AI Assistant can guide you through the process of playbook creation and even suggest ideas for such. |
Playbooks run wherever you work | You can run playbooks wherever you use your connected AI Assistant, including its mobile app. The way you run them is the same in every place: ask in chat and your AI Assistant will work through the playbook with you. |
Keeping your data safe
The Payhawk MCP protects your data in the ways listed in the following table.
Safeguard | What it is |
|---|---|
Your permissions apply to every request | Your AI Assistant can never see or do more than you can in Payhawk. This also holds across multiple entities: you only see the entities you have a role in. |
You preview every change first | Any action that writes data, such as an approval, an entry, or a new request, shows you exactly what it will do and waits for your explicit confirmation. |
Your sensitive data stays protected | Card numbers show the last four digits only, and personal details are stripped from listings. |
Money movement stays in Payhawk | The Payhawk MCP never starts a payment or a transfer. These actions always happen in the Payhawk Web Portal or the Payhawk Mobile App. |
Supported AI Assistants
The Payhawk MCP works with Claude (Anthropic), ChatGPT (OpenAI), and Codex (OpenAI). The connector is built on the same open standard, so its capabilities and data protection are identical in all of them. For the setup steps, see the article about connecting Payhawk to your AI Assistant.