U.S. Banks Lock Out A.I. Agents
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The A.I. can look, but it can’t touch: Major American banks and brokerages are blocking A.I. agents that try to move money on behalf of their customers. Meta’s personal agent Muse is the most prominent target. Charles Schwab is actively blocking unauthorized agents, its chief executive, Rick Wurster, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We can’t control it, the client can’t control it, something could go wrong and who’s liable?” Mr. Wurster said.
Dozens of Blocks a Week
From the banks’ point of view, the problem is that customers hand their login credentials to an A.I. agent, which then signs in on their behalf. According to Mr. Wurster, Schwab receives a weekly report on blocked agents, and the big providers are stopped “in the tens and twenties each week.” He sees that as a sign that clients are not yet ready to turn their accounts over to A.I.
Schwab does not plan to shut A.I. out completely, however. Outside A.I. models will be able to check balances and run analyses through Schwab’s own MCP servers. “We’re not going to allow them to move money,” Mr. Wurster said. Instead, the brokerage is pushing its in-house A.I. assistant, Charley.
Mr. Dimon Warns of ‘Rogue Agents’
JPMorgan Chase is also keeping outside A.I. agents away from its customers’ accounts. “You don’t want rogue agents,” its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, said on the bank’s quarterly earnings call, Fortune reports. The bank blocks agents that log in with customers’ banking credentials. Data sharing through authorized open banking providers remains allowed.
According to The Financial Times, Citigroup and Bank of America are following suit. Citi no longer lets A.I. agents carry out transactions, and Bank of America’s chief executive, Brian Moynihan, wants a human to keep approving money leaving customer accounts. The banks have already contacted officials at the Federal Reserve, according to the report.
What Muse Can Actually Do
Meta launched Muse in September as a personal agent for email, travel and calendars. Through the financial data company Plaid, users can also connect their bank accounts to have balances, transactions and investments explained to them. Earlier, Amazon had already locked out the Muse agent because Meta wants a share of purchases made through it. Meta would not say whether Muse can keep helping with finances if more banks put up barriers. Together with the A.I. start-up Sierra, the company is working on a protocol that lets personal agents identify themselves and obtain customers’ permission. With Walmart, Meta has also launched the Personal Agent Protocol for shopping agents.
Is It Really Just About Security?
Critics see hard business interests behind the blocks as well. The banks worry that A.I. agents could automatically shift customers’ money into higher-yielding accounts. According to Torsten Slok, the chief economist at Apollo, such accounts in the United States pay 3.3 to 5 percent a year, while the average checking account pays 0.1 percent. JPMorgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo together hold $1.6 trillion (about €1.43 trillion) in non-interest-bearing deposits. Paying 3 percent on those funds would cost them roughly $47 billion (about €42 billion) a year, according to The Financial Times, almost half of their combined annual profit.
There is evidence for the security concerns too. Incidents involving A.I. agents that deleted data or acted on their own have piled up recently. And the question of liability remains open in the United States: Who pays when an agent makes a wrong transfer is still being debated in Congress.
