Cash App’s MoneyBot might know your spending habits better than you do

NEW YORK (AP) — Imagine if your bank could move money for you with only the slightest of digital nods for your approval. Or that could tell you that you’re overspending but more importantly know how to address that overspending and put you on better financial footing.

That’s what you’ll get with MoneyBot, a new financial services chatbot shown off this week by Cash App that will be integrated into its banking app this winter. Unlike existing bank chatbots, which can handle routine tasks like changing an address, MoneyBot can take advanced actions for a customer like creating a savings plan, buying or selling stock, or even evaluating a customer’s spending habits.

MoneyBot is part of the next generation of chatbots using what the tech industry calls “agentic” AI, which turns tools like ChatGPT into an “AI agent” that can take action online on a person’s behalf. That means, instead of just writing text, answering questions or recommending products found online, an “agentic” chatbot could also buy a product.

Amazon now has Rufus to go with Alexa, which both either provide information on products or can buy things on customers’ behalf. Walmart is rolling out “Chat & Buy” and Microsoft has Copilot Shopping.

Agentic AI, for being so new, is already causing some controversy. Amazon is suing an AI chatbot company, Perplexity, for alleged computer fraud over AI shopping agents that Amazon says are disguising themselves as human buyers to access customer accounts without Amazon’s permission. Perplexity has denied the claims.

Traditional banks have had chatbots for a while, notably Bank of America’s “Erica” or “Ask Amex” from American Express, but have hesitated to roll out agentic AI. They worry about possible liability if a chatbot buys a product by mistake for a customer or is maliciously used to buy things it is not supposed to.

“Our top priority is to keep our customers’ and clients’ data safe above all else,” said Mark Birkhead, chief data officer at JPMorgan Chase, in an interview with the consulting firm McKinsey back in June.

Cash App on the other hand is diving in head first.

One notable feature of MoneyBot is its prompts and suggestions. When MoneyBot launches, it does an analysis of the the customer’s transactions and spending and gives them independent recommendations on actions they could take. Unlike other bank chatbots, which take you to other parts of a banks’ website, MoneyBot’s transactions and analysis happen inside a single screen. Cash App’s executives see MoneyBot becoming the primary way people interact with CashApp in the future.

Want to know your biggest spending categories instantly and how to cut your spending? MoneyBot gives several suggestions in a matter of seconds, showing you the merchants you spent with. Need to save $1,000 toward a vacation in six months? MoneyBot creates an automated savings plan for you with only a couple of prompts.

Want to put money into the stock market? It takes only a request and confirmation in MoneyBot, which will buy Tesla stock for you or even bitcoin. MoneyBot will remind you, however, that it does not give investing advice.

MoneyBot may even anticipate why the customer is opening up the app in the first place.

“We have such a deep understanding of who you are that it’s almost a failure if we have to rely on customers to ask right questions,” said Owen Jennings, executive officer and business lead at Block, in an interview.

Company officials pointed out that, despite having these agent abilities, MoneyBot will still need active confirmation from the user to do many of its money-moving tasks. But that confirmation is often just a simple push of a button or a “yes” in a chat box.

Cash App executives say MoneyBot uses three different AI models, choosing the most appropriate one for the customer’s question. Some are easier to recognize, including the eager-to-please tone that often comes with ChatGPT 5.

A Cash App employee demo’ing MoneyBot, much to his chagrin, showed that he spent heavily at Nordstrom last month. MoneyBot kindly suggested he might want to cut back on his clothing purchases if he needs to save money.

There are things MoneyBot cannot do because of the legal and privacy questions that have yet to be answered. MoneyBot won’t offer you a loan but feels like it could do so if the toggle were ever turned on.

Because of the way the prompts are written, Cash App employees acknowledged there could be privacy and legal implications with what MoneyBot suggests if appropriate guardrails are not put into place. For instance, what’s to stop MoneyBot from favoring a buy now, pay later loan from AfterPay — also owned by Cash App’s parent company Block — for purchases instead of Affirm or Klarna? In the meantime, asking for a loan inside MoneyBot will transfer a customer to a human agent.

Not surprisingly, MoneyBot has the usual disclosure found at the bottom of most chatbots these days: Artificial intelligence can make mistakes. Somehow, that feels a bit more important than an AI chatbot accidentally providing the wrong amount of cumin in a fajita recipe.