Major US banks are locking out AI agents that log in with customer credentials

AI agents are using customer-provided credentials to access bank accounts without bank approval. Several major US banks, including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, are restricting external AI agent access, Axios reports. That violates bank policies requiring account holders to log in personally. Some AI agents appear to act on their own, without direct instructions from users. Morgan Stanley already blocks AI agents entirely, and JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citi are doing the same. Morgan Stanley stressed that it has not seen any "rogue AI agents" on its platforms.

Most banks want to limit agents to read-only access, letting them view account data but not carry out any actions. The banks say customers want to use AI agents, but the security risks are too high for now. Many banks also can't tell whether an agent is acting on a user's behalf or accessing an account on its own.

Users can give their agents access to accounts through a browser, using tools like Computer Use or open-source agent software such as OpenClaw. Blocking that on the provider side will be hard. OpenAI has even launched a dedicated ChatGPT service for financial tasks in the US with read-only access to financial data.

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