How to delete a smart approval rule

Once a smart approval rule has served its purpose — say, you set one up to auto-approve your daughter’s weekly lunch top-ups at her your city school canteen, and she’s now moved to a school that uses a different system — you’ll want to remove it cleanly rather than leave stale rules running in the background. Unused rules can cause confusion, especially if a merchant name or spend category overlaps with a new setup you’re building.

Before you delete, it’s worth doing a quick audit. Head to how to view your smart approval rules to confirm which rule you’re targeting. Rules with similar conditions (same your local currency limit, same merchant type) can look alike at a glance, and deleting the wrong one means any pending transactions that matched it will fall back to manual approval — which can catch your child off guard mid-purchase.

Steps to delete a smart approval rule

  1. Open your family dashboard. From the app portal, navigate to your family’s Smart Approval settings directly at https://kiddy.cash/family/:family_id/smart-approval/:smart_approval_id — replace :family_id and :smart_approval_id with the actual IDs shown in your URL when you open the rule. This deep link takes you straight to the specific rule without hunting through menus.

  2. Confirm the rule details before acting. On the rule detail screen, review the conditions — the spend ceiling, the linked child wallet, the merchant or category filter, and whether the rule is currently active or paused. A paused rule still exists and can be reactivated; only delete if you’re certain you won’t need it again.

  3. Tap the rule options menu. Look for the three-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the rule detail card. This surfaces actions specific to that rule, including Edit, Pause, and Delete.

  4. Select Delete. KiddyCash will show a confirmation prompt summarising the rule — including the child it applies to, the spend limit (e.g. the equivalent of 500 in your local currency per transaction), and the approval conditions. Read this carefully. If your child has a transaction pending that was waiting on this rule, the prompt will flag it.

  5. Confirm the deletion. Tap Delete rule in the confirmation dialog. The rule is removed immediately and permanently. There is no archive or soft-delete — once it’s gone, you’ll need to create a new smart approval rule from scratch if you change your mind.

  6. Check downstream effects. After deletion, any spend requests from your child that would have matched the deleted rule will now route to your manual approval queue. If you use mobile money-linked top-ups or have a subscription running through a business account, verify those flows still behave as expected. Notifications for pending approvals will land in your app inbox.

A note on verification and rule eligibility

Smart approval rules interact with your family’s KYC status. If your account verification lapses or a re-verification is triggered, some rules may be suspended automatically before you get a chance to delete them manually. It’s worth staying current on how KiddyCash handles these scenarios — the team has published useful context in what’s new in verification in KiddyCash and a more detailed breakdown in a closer look at verification in KiddyCash.

Keeping your smart approval rules tidy means your children get consistent, predictable spending experiences — and you stay in control without approval fatigue cluttering your notifications.