Bank of America and other major banks warn AI shopping agents are outpacing fraud protections

AI shopping agents, the kind that browse, compare, and buy things on your behalf, are getting good enough that your bank is officially worried. On September 22, 2026, a consortium that includes Bank of America, NatWest, ING, New Zealand’s ASB Bank, and Capital One released a joint report flagging that the rise of agentic commerce tools is creating meaningful new risks around fraud, scams, and consumer data privacy. The core concern is not that AI shopping bots exist. It’s that they’ve arrived faster than the rules designed to protect people from them. What the banks are actually saying The banks are specifically asking policymakers to require disclosure whenever an AI agent is involved in a financial transaction. Beyond disclosure, the group is pushing for greater transparency in how AI shopping tools make decisions, and for stronger standards around how customer data is handled when these agents are operating. One of the more specific risks the report highlights involves payment security. AI shopping agents, in their current form, may directly request and enter card details during automated checkout flows, or steer users toward payment methods that are less secure than what they’d...