Your bank can’t tell your agent from a thief

Homepage > News > Editorial > Your bank can’t tell your agent from a thief The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of CoinGeek. TL;DR: Axios reported on October 22 that major U.S. banks are finding AI agents inside customer accounts and cannot tell whether those agents are acting on the customer’s instructions. Per Axios, they are generally logging in with the customer’s own password, which means the banks have an identity problem, not a robot problem. Give every agent its own key and a signed, scoped grant from the customer, check both before the money moves, and the ban becomes unnecessary. Key Takeaways: Morgan Stanley is blocking third-party AI agents, and JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citi are restricting them, per Axios. The banks’ own sources say they “are broadly not able to parse whether agent account activity is user-directed.” A shared username and password is a bearer credential: whoever holds it is the customer, as far as the bank can tell. Liability after the fact cannot make millions of accounts whole; control has to be in place at the moment of the transfer. Know Your Agent on Sigma Auth pairs...