Schwab and JPMorgan won't let AI agents move customer money
Their CEOs said outside agents will only be able to check balances; Schwab says it stops dozens a week and is pushing its own assistant.
Charles Schwab and JPMorgan have drawn the same line on AI agents: they can look, but they can't move money. Rick Wurster, Schwab's chief executive, told Bloomberg Television on October 16 that the firm blocks third-party agents that try to get in with a client's credentials or through browser automation, according to The Next Web. Among them he named Muse, Meta's assistant that can book, buy and negotiate on a user's behalf.
Wurster said such agents are stopped "tens" of times a week and put the underlying problem this way: we can't control it, he said, and neither can the client, and it is unclear who would be liable if something goes wrong.
Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's chief executive, had said on October 13, on the earnings call, that no outside agent will act inside the bank's systems, and he spoke of "rogue agents". Third-party tools can see account data at JPMorgan, but they cannot send money or pay bills.
Schwab's alternative, according to American Banker, is read-only MCP servers. MCP is the standard that lets an AI model plug into an outside service: a client could check balances and do research with the model of their choice, without moving funds. Schwab also wants clients to use Charley, its assistant introduced on September 30, which for now only changes an address or names a trusted contact.
Security is not the only reading. Tim Welsh, of Nexus Strategies, told American Banker that data-protection fears are real, but that Schwab also has an economic incentive to keep clients' cash in its sweep accounts. Those accounts weigh heavily in the 3 480 million dollars in net interest revenue for the third quarter. Analysts cited by American Banker say an independent agent could move that cash into higher-paying options.
For anyone who uses an AI assistant with their banking at these two banks, the practical effect is to look without delegating transfers. No equivalent policy has been reported at banks with operations in Mexico, and in the United States the debate over who is responsible when an agent causes harm remains open.
