Snippings

Marc Rubenstein summarises this view rather well when he says that “financial services companies thrive on customer inattention” and goes on to ask whether AI agents, with their infinite attention spans, be their downfall? That may sound a little apocalyptic, but I think he is right. In fact, I’ve thought this since I was first asked to think seriously about the impact of AI on financial services: there is going to be a revolution, but it’s because of customers’ use of AI, not because of banks’ use of AI.

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Applying the economics of a mature business to immature possibilities is an exceptionally good way of ensuring these possibilities are never realized.

From: Off Kilter 237: Regeneration or Dilution? – Off Kilter.

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Marketing is the business discipline of future customer value creation and subsequent value capture. Not advertising, demand generation, communications, or any particular collection of executional activities. Nor is it limited to a department, or an argument that everything should ladder up to a CMO. Instead, it’s the business discipline concerned with understanding what people value, determining how a business can create that value, and connecting the resulting customer experiences to the corporation’s economic performance.

From: Off Kilter 237: Regeneration or Dilution? – Off Kilter.

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EARLIER THIS YEAR, sources tell WIRED, a contractor caused a security incident at the Department of Defense by connecting a secure centralized system used by multiple intelligence agencies to their personal account for Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding agent. It appears that the agent used by the contractor, who is employed by the global consulting firm Accenture, then sent information about the DOD system, including login credentials, to a high-risk, third-party website.

From: A Defense Contractor Gave Their Personal AI Agent Access to a Secure Pentagon System | WIRED.

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Traditional IAM (Identity and Access Management) systems were designed for humans and static applications, not autonomous AI agents acting on our behalf.
As agents take initiative, legacy credentials like API keys or OAuth tokens become liabilities, easy to misuse, and impossible to trace.
Researchers are experimenting with cryptographic identifiers, agent-specific verifiable credentials, and runtime policy enforcement.
New proposals like OpenID Connect for Agents, agent-bound access tokens, and audit trails are taking shape, but standards are still early.
Trust frameworks must evolve to treat agents as first-class actors with identity, delegation limits, and behavioural accountability.

From: Trust Frameworks for AI Agents – E2: Authentication | News & Headlines.

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By December 2026, every EU Member State must issue at least one certified EUDI Wallet containing Person Identification Data (PID). The ambition is bold, the ecosystem is complex, and the underlying legal, technical, and user experience frameworks are still evolving. Yet the deadline is firm. Waiting for perfect clarity is not an option. In practice this means Member States are under pressure to deliver something secure, interoperable and user centered and achieve this while the frameworks, specifications and guidance continue to evolve.
While some Member States like Germany, France and Austria forge ahead, others may find themselves trying to compress years of ecosystem development into months. Others like the consortium of Nordic and Baltic states are considering a harmonized certification scheme and flexible governance models to be able to adapt to EU level changes more easily. This approach allows incremental testing and refinement, building confidence with vendors, issuers, and relying parties while ensuring a trustworthy, seamless user experience.

From: EUDI wallet certification: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started” | Biometric Update.

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Consumers are worried about agentic AI manipulating their bank accounts, too. On Tuesday, the American Bankers Association will release the results of a survey of more than 4,000 American adults, that found that 77% are concerned about giving an AI agent permission to move money, make payments or carry out other financial transactions for them.

The situation feels similar to 10 years ago, when Plaid and Mint were logging into bank accounts using their fintech clients’ customers’ credentials to screen-scrape their account information. At first, some banks thought these automated screen scrapers were fraudsters or cybercriminals and blocked them. Then banks started signing agreements with the major data aggregators to share customer data through application programming interfaces using authentication standards.

If history repeats itself, banks and tech companies will hammer out agreements on identity, authentication and liability protocols, and then banks will lift their bans on external AI agents.

From: Banks are blocking external AI agents. Is this sustainable? | American Banker.

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The use of virtual cards also puts Stripe in an advantageous position in AI shopping. It could gain more insight into people’s agentic shopping habits than the card networks currently can, since Stripe can see what people are buying through the AI agents it supports. And its early foothold could give it more sway than the card networks over how the technology evolves.

“For Visa and Mastercard, the biggest risk to their business is Stripe infrastructure becoming the default solution,” said Rene Reinsberg, CEO and co-founder of Self, a startup that builds identity and payments tools for AI agents. “I think that’s even more pronounced with agentic commerce than the traditional commerce checkout flows.”

From: Stripe’s AI Shopping Lead Puts Card Giants on Edge — The Information.

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Stripe has introduced free instant business-to-business transfers through a new Stripe Pay plug-in, allowing companies to send money using business profile handles as the payments firm develops separate stablecoin and AI-agent payment services.

From: Stripe launches free instant B2B payments through business handles.

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Currently, many banks are blocking Muse and similar agents from accessing customer accounts or moving money without customer authentication by the bank. Their statements cite the security and liability issues above. In many media reports, though, their motivation is alleged to be the last two issues — fear of having to pay more for deposits or fear of a run.

From: Login | CMS | Arizent.

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Technology companies are selling agents as personalized assistants for billions of people — always-on, compliant entities that will schedule meetings, throw parties, and purchase things for human users. So far, agents and shopping seem to go hand in hand; Meta said in its Q3 earnings call this month that it was the most common use case for Muse so far, and that purchases were over $200 on average. Muse has been a hit for Meta and could signal a turning point for AI agents: The company said 10 million people in the US had downloaded the app in 40 days.

From: The RealReal won’t let AI agents hog designer clothing | The Verge.

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