Mathew PaquetChecklist · 4 min read
The Agent Gate Checklist
The six questions an AI agent has to answer before anyone lets it touch money, and what a good answer looks like for each.
On October 13, JPMorgan Chase, the biggest bank in the U.S., drew a simple line for outside AI agents. A spokeswoman confirmed to CNBC that an agent can't log in with a customer's username and password, and can't act on the customer's behalf. It can still read: if you linked your account through a connector like Plaid, an agent can see things like your balance.
Plaid is a service many finance apps use to reach your bank. You approve the link once, and the app gets the data you allowed, without ever holding your password.
According to Reuters, the Federal Reserve, the OCC and the FDIC have been asking banks of every size about their AI. Six of the questions are about control. They're questions, not rules, and they're about the banks' own AI. But they make a good entry exam for any agent that wants to touch money. The good answers below come from how Robinhood, which lets outside agents trade and spend for some customers, describes its setup.
Same shape inside the bank. JPMorgan's own pilot, Smart Cash, moves customers' money, but only between their own accounts at the bank. A fence somebody can check.
None of these needs a bank's permission. It's the fence, built on your side.
Logins travel badly. Dimon on handing agents your login: "There's a liability transfer." He didn't say who pays in which case. Amazon blocked Meta's Muse agent in September, saying it appeared to store customers' login details.
If your business runs agents that buy, pay or touch client data, expect a client, a partner or an insurer to ask some version of these six questions. Fill this in for each agent, and fix the first question it fails.
What it can touch: [ACCOUNTS / CARDS / CLIENT DATA]
1. Limits: [ITS OWN CARD OR ACCOUNT? WHICH LIMIT?]
2. Monitored and approved: [WHO GETS NOTIFIED? WHAT NEEDS APPROVAL?]
3. Audit: [WHERE IS THE RECORD OF WHAT IT WAS ASKED AND DID?]
4. Authority: [WHAT IT CAN NEVER REACH]
5. Humans: [WHICH DECISIONS A PERSON MAKES]
6. Shutdown: [HOW I DISCONNECT IT, AND HOW LONG IT TAKES]
Fails first: [QUESTION NUMBER] - fix by: [DATE]
For the last year the question was, can an AI agent do this? Now it's, can you prove you control it?
Sources
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List every AI tool that uses your bank login and move each one to a read-only connection or its own card with a limit.
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