Citigroup and Bank of America have restricted third-party artificial-intelligence agents from customer accounts. The Financial Times wrote on Friday, 16 October 2026; Folha followed on Saturday. This is not a ban on AI inside the banks. It is a lock on the account door: an outside bot may no longer log in and move money on their digital platforms.

Citi said it does not allow “third-party AI agents or assistants to access a customer’s account or conduct transactions directly” on its digital channels, to protect accounts and data. Customers may still authorise some open-banking providers for read-only access. The distinction matters: reading a balance is not the same as a payment order.

Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan told CNBC on Wednesday that “there should be a person involved to authorise money leaving your account”. The bank is talking to makers of autonomous agents so that a customer does not later say they do not know where the money went. A person familiar with the matter confirmed to the FT that BofA had restricted access.

The step follows September’s launch of Meta’s Muse AI assistant and a warning from Apollo’s chief economist, Torsten Slok: assistants could automatically shift household cash from current accounts paying about 0.1% towards deposits paying 3.3–5%. JPMorgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo together hold about $1.6 trillion in non-interest-bearing deposits. A 3% rate on that cash would cost, in Slok’s arithmetic, about $47 billion a year.

Jamie Dimon said on the earnings call that JPMorgan would also limit access, “because nobody wants rogue agents, and there could be thousands of them”. Wall Street has also spoken, the FT reported, with the Fed; the central bank declined to comment.

This article is not investment advice and does not say deposits will leave tomorrow. Today’s curb is bank policy, not a statute.

Image: Kidfly182, Citigroup Center, New York, August 2024, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; archive building, not an October 2026 board meeting.

Sources consulted: Citi e Bank of America sao mais dois bancos dos EUA a restringir acesso de IA a contas - Folha; Citi becomes latest US bank to restrict AI agents from accessing accounts - Financial Times.