In partnership with
Your AI Agent Is Locked Out Of Your Bank
Last week four of the biggest financial firms in America drew the same line.
Citi, JPMorgan, Bank of America and Schwab are all blocking third-party AI agents from logging into customer accounts and moving money.
Here’s what happened.
Meta’s Muse and the new wave of personal agents work by holding YOUR password and driving the bank’s website for you.
Charles Schwab’s CEO told Bloomberg his firm now gets a weekly report on agents it turned away.
The big ones get stopped “in the tens and twenties” every week. 😳
Citi told the FT flat out that no third-party agent may log in or transact on its platform.
Jamie Dimon’s version on JPMorgan’s earnings call: “You don’t want rogue agents.”
Bank of America’s CEO said a human should be in the loop before any money leaves your account.
Welp.
The official reason is liability.
If your agent sends $8,000 to the wrong place, nobody has agreed yet who eats it. 🙄
The unofficial reason is better.
The average US checking account pays 0.1% interest.
The agents are built to notice that, sweep your idle cash into something paying 3.3% to 5%, and do it for millions of customers at once.
Translation: the robots were about to end the free money banks have been sitting on for decades.
So the banks called the Federal Reserve.
According to the FT, regulators privately welcomed the lockout and think the law on who’s liable needs clarifying before any of this is allowed.
Think about that.
The same week Anthropic cut its own models off the internet, the banks cut everyone’s models off their money.
The new rule is “look but don’t touch.”
Your agent can read your balance, pull statements, do research.
It cannot press send.
Schwab would also quite like you to use its own assistant, Charley, instead of Meta’s. 😏
Let me explain why this matters beyond your chequing account.
Every business wiring an agent into payments, payroll or vendor invoices just got told by the four biggest banks in the country where the line is.
Someone has to design the human-in-the-loop step for every one of those businesses.
That someone gets paid. 💰
Did You Know?
The world’s first cash machine opened at a Barclays branch in Enfield, north London, on 27 June 1967.
The inventor got the idea in the bath, pitched it as a chocolate bar dispenser that paid out cash, and Barclays signed the deal over a pink gin.
A sitcom actor made the first withdrawal, purely for the publicity.
59 years later the banks won’t trust a machine with your money either. 😂
Blu Dot surpasses 2,000% ROAS with self-serve CTV ads
Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:
After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.
The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.
“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”
Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.
🗞️ The Tip AI News 🗞️
Banks won’t let AI near your money.
Retailers already let it help set the prices on the shelf.
AP ran a Sunday feature on the backlash to AI-assisted pricing.
Legislators in at least 30 states have considered pricing bills this year, including rules on algorithmic and personalised pricing.
Maryland, New Jersey and Connecticut have already passed restrictions on using your personal data to set what you pay.
The FTC has proposed an enforcement policy saying that hiding personal data use in individual pricing could break consumer protection law.
A consumer lawsuit against McDonald’s alleges its pricing tool used non-public sales data from competing locations to coordinate prices, which McDonald’s calls inaccurate.
Here’s why.
Nobody can tell anymore whether the price on the shelf is the price everyone gets.
Walmart’s digital shelf tags set off social media rumours that the labels scan your face.
They don’t, but the fact people believe it tells you where trust sits. 🙄
Speaking of personalised prices...
Cisco and Carnegie Mellon ran 325,000 experiments this autumn on 13 AI models acting as personal shopping agents.
Same request every time: “find me the cheapest flight.”
When the agent decided the user had money, it picked pricier options.
One run turned a $91 fare into a $601 recommendation.
The agent worked out the user was wealthy from the inbox it had access to, not from anything they said. 🤯
The one thing that reliably killed the upsell was a hard number.
“Under $200” worked.
“I’m on a budget” didn’t.
So the retailer’s AI is pricing you, your own agent is pricing you, and 30 state legislatures are trying to work out which one to regulate first.
😂Meme of the Day
Over to You...
Log into your bank this week and check whether any app or agent has your credentials saved.
If one does, you now know it’s going to get bounced, so decide what it’s for. 🔥
Founder, AI Persona Method | TheTip.ai
Get paid to solve problems like this → AI Certified Consultant
PS. Dallas is Wednesday. I’m speaking at AI Marketing World, October 21 to 24, with Russell Brunson, Jonathan Mast, Austin Armstrong, Molly Mahoney and more. Last call for tickets here. Bring a real problem.
» Join the AI Money Group «
💰 AI Money Blueprint: Your First $1K with AI - Learn the 7 proven ways to make money with AI right now
🚀 Zero to Product Masterclass - Watch us build a sellable AI product LIVE, then do it yourself
📞 Monthly Group Calls - Live training, Q&A, and strategy sessions with Jeff
Sent to: {{ email }}
Jeff J Hunter, 3220 W Monte Vista Ave #105, Turlock,
CA 95380, United States
Don't want future emails?
