Citi and BofA have blocked AI agents from accessing customer accounts. The banks are protecting their interests.

Citibank and Bank of America, following the lead of several other U.S. banks, have blocked AI-powered agents from accessing their customers' accounts. Lending institutions fear that automated assistants will begin transferring money held in deposits into higher-yielding instruments.

Citigroup has banned third-party AI agents from accessing customer accounts and conducting transactions directly through its digital banking platforms. Bank of America has also temporarily restricted access for AI agents while the bank works out rules for determining liability for payments initiated by artificial intelligence, according to the Financial Times.

“We firmly believe that people must be involved in the process and confirm money transfers from their accounts,” said Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan in an interview with CNBC, as quoted by the FT. The bank is working with developers of AI agents to prevent situations in which customers discover debits without understanding why or where the money went, the top executive noted.

JPMorgan Chase also plans to block third-party AI agents from accessing accounts, the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, said following the release of its quarterly results. “You don’t want uncontrolled agents operating—there could be thousands of them,” he said.

Charles Schwab is already blocking attempts by unauthorized AI agents to access client accounts and manage their funds. Among them is Muse, Meta Platforms’ personal AI assistant, Schwab CEO Rick Wooster said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We don’t want people to simply give their password to Muse and allow it to log into their account and take actions on the client’s behalf. We can’t control that, nor can the client; something could go wrong—and who would be held responsible then?” said Wooster. According to him, Schwab blocks dozens of such attempts every week.

At the same time, banks do not intend to completely block artificial intelligence’s access to financial information. Schwab is developing secure connection channels that will allow external large language models to interact with the company’s systems. These tools will be able to view account balances and assist with data analysis, but will not be able to transfer funds. Citi, for its part, allows limited, read-only access to account data through select open banking service providers. Schwab itself is offering customers the use of its own AI assistant, Charley, which was unveiled last month, according to Bloomberg.

AI assistants can automatically transfer households’ money to accounts offering returns of 3.3–5% per year, rather than the average 0.1% interest rate on checking accounts in the U.S., Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slock explained to the FT.

JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo hold $1.6 trillion in non-interest-bearing deposits—that’s 16% of their total liabilities. If the banks paid 3% annual interest on these funds, the additional cost would amount to about $47 billion a year—nearly half of their combined annual profit, according to FT calculations.

Executives from major banks also reached out to representatives of the U.S. Federal Reserve, expressing concern about the growing number of customers using AI agents for financial transactions, the FT reports. According to the publication, regulators privately supported the restrictions and believe it is necessary to clarify legal issues: how customers can authorize autonomous systems to carry out transactions and who bears responsibility if something goes wrong.

Lenders should expand their loyalty programs and offer customers more attractive terms to retain deposits, according to Christoph Stegmayer, a senior partner at the consulting firm Simon-Kucher, as reported by the FT.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor