Banks are closing the door to AI agents as stablecoins and crypto firms compete for deposits

Between Oct. 2 and Oct. 21, the largest U.S. banks restricted AI agents from customer accounts, a federal regulator left stablecoin rewards open to case-by-case review, and a community bank trade group sued to stop crypto firms from obtaining national charters.

The three disputes involve different companies and different regulators, but they share a common stake in the deposits banks rely on to fund their lending, as well as whether that money stays inside the banking system all together.

Banks shut AI agents out of customer accounts

The pressure on the first front began in September, when Meta launched Muse, an AI assistant that can transact for consumers through Stripe’s Link wallet.

As Muse overtook ChatGPT as the top free app in the US, shares of JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo lost more than 3% within days on investor concerns that the agent could help consumers find cheaper alternatives to the providers they already use.

When JPMorgan reported third-quarter earnings on Oct. 13, CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank would limit AI agents’ access to client accounts “because you don’t want rogue agents and there could be thousands of them.” Citigroup and Bank of America followed with restrictions of their own, according to the Financial Times.

Citi said it does not permit third-party AI agents to log into a customer’s account or transact on its platforms, while still allowing read-only access through approved open banking providers, and Charles Schwab CEO Rick Wurster said the firm was blocking unauthorized agents that try to move clients’ money, including Muse. The FT also reported that banks fear agents will drain deposits by shifting idle cash to higher returns.

Theo Wasserberg, managing director at Embat, a treasury management software company, told International Business Times that the restrictions mark an early stage of adoption rather than a refusal.

“Caution from the industry’s largest institutions shouldn’t be read as resistance to AI agents. It is the necessary first chapter of their adoption,” he said, pointing to how businesses already delegate access to their accounts. “Corporate banking already offers a blueprint. Businesses have long allowed others to act on their accounts through mandates, with defined limits, dual approvals and a clear audit trail of who authorized what. AI agents need exactly that.”

Liability will decide when agents get in

Banks can set those terms themselves because no federal rule requires them to let agents move money.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s open banking rule would require banks to share account data, including the information needed to initiate a payment, but it does not cover third parties transacting inside bank platforms, and a federal court in Kentucky has enjoined the CFPB from enforcing it while the bureau reconsiders the rule.

With no regulator setting the terms, bank executives have made liability the condition for letting agents in. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said the bank is developing protocols to determine which party would be liable for payments authorized by AI, and PNC CEO Bill Demchak told the Money20/20 conference on Oct. 19 that “no [bank] is going to let people transact inside of accounts without a human in the loop,” adding that tech companies would need to accept a “massive liability shift” for any damage their agents cause, because banks are not willing to pay the bill.

Abdulaziz Kanoo, co-founder and co-CEO of ARP Digital, a regulated digital capital infrastructure company, told International Business Times that the harder problem is proof rather than principle.

“Liability is not difficult to assign in principle; the evidentiary basis for assigning it does not yet exist,” he said, arguing for a system in which each agent operates under a recorded mandate setting its scope and limits. Under that model, he said, “That loss should rest with the party that controlled the failure, an agent acting within its mandate is executing the customer’s instruction; an agent exceeding it is the provider’s responsibility, and providers should insure accordingly.”

Stablecoin rewards stay open to review

The second front opened on Oct. 21, when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency finalized its rule implementing the GENIUS Act, the 2025 law that created a federal framework for payment stablecoins, with both the rule and the law taking effect on Jan. 18, 2027.

The rule bans stablecoin issuers from paying yield directly to customers, but the OCC said it will evaluate reward arrangements made through third parties on a case-by-case basis, leaving open a channel bank trade groups had warned could pull money out of the banking system.

After the rule was published, the Independent Community Bankers of America cited analysis finding that stablecoin adoption could reduce community bank lending by at least $850 billion in the coming years.

For Coinbase, which pays rewards to customers who hold the USDC stablecoin on its crypto exchange, those arrangements already shape the budget, since the company said that apart from growth in USDC rewards it expects its adjusted expenses for 2026 to be flat year over year, after reporting a record $20 billion in average USDC held in its products in the second quarter.

Matt Price, head of global partnerships at WasabiCard, a payments company that issues stablecoin-funded cards, told International Business Times that banks have reason to be concerned but that he has “a hard time seeing $850 billion in lost community bank lending anytime soon,” pointing to the size of the market today.

“The entire stablecoin market is worth around $300 billion today,” he said, adding that the pressure will show up in pricing well before it reaches lending. “I expect banks to face pressure to offer better rates long before we see lending losses anywhere near that scale.”

Community banks take charters to court

The ICBA opened the third front on Oct. 2, when it sued the OCC in federal court in Washington, arguing that the agency exceeded its authority in approving national trust charters for crypto firms.

According to the lawsuit, the OCC has approved or conditionally approved 21 national trust charters during President Donald Trump’s second term, 13 of them for crypto companies, and ICBA CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey has linked trust charters to concerns about deposit flight.

Filings have continued since the lawsuit, with stablecoin infrastructure firm Rain applying three days later for a national trust charter for a bank that would issue stablecoins under the GENIUS Act and hold reserves for other issuers. Corporate spend management company Ramp filed on Oct. 16 for a trust bank that would hold digital assets and manage investments for clients, with neither proposing to accept deposits or make loans.

Fintechs that do want to hold deposits are going further, as Chime agreed in September to buy Stride Bank, an Oklahoma lender with $5.4 billion in assets, for $590 million in cash, in a deal that would lower its funding costs and end its partner bank fees, and CEO Chris Britt said Chime will hold consumer deposits itself and use them to fund loans.

On Oct. 22, buy now, pay later provider Sezzle said it had applied to the OCC for a national bank charter that would let it offer checking and savings accounts.

Asked which of the three fronts would have the biggest effect on banks’ deposit bases and funding costs over the next two years, Kanoo put this one ahead of the others: “Charters first, by a distance, and the effect is already visible in transaction prices rather than projections.”

Deposits are still growing, but not evenly

All three fronts are opening at a time when deposits overall are still rising, as domestic deposits at FDIC-insured institutions grew $142.7 billion in the second quarter of 2026, the eighth consecutive quarterly increase, while uninsured deposits rose $317.4 billion, more than the total increase, which means insured deposits declined over the quarter.

FDIC Chair Travis Hill said on Oct. 20 that AI agents moving deposits is “the big thing that we’re thinking about,” while noting that about half of US deposits are corporate and that depositors who accept low rates often “value other things.”

Where the risk falls depends on whom you ask. Fifth Third CEO Tim Spence said on Oct. 19 that the lenders most at risk from AI-driven cash sorting are online-only banks, “the ones that have nothing but pricing defining their value propositions,” while CFO Bryan Preston said competition for deposits has been more intense this year than in recent years, and the bank’s deposit costs rose 10 basis points in the third quarter to 1.64%.

Price points to a different weak spot, saying, “I’d be most concerned about community and regional banks that rely on a handful of large business deposits. If just a few of those customers move their money, replacing it can get expensive fast.”

Banks still control the door

Coinbase is due to report its third-quarter results after the market closes on Oct. 29, its first since the OCC rule was finalized. The OCC says on its GENIUS Act page that it will start accepting applications from stablecoin issuers once the Office of Management and Budget gives final approval to the information collection for the application forms, and the ICBA’s challenge to the trust charters is still pending in Washington.

On AI agents, no regulator has yet said who bears the loss when an agent moves money wrongly, and according to the FT, officials believe the law may need to clarify how customers authorize autonomous technology to act for them and who is liable when a transaction fails.

Wasserberg expects the banks that move first on agent mandates to benefit: “The institutions that design these mandates proactively will be the ones customers trust to put their agents to work.”

Until lawmakers or regulators set those terms, the banks that hold Americans’ deposits are the ones deciding whether an agent can touch them.