Imagine a personal assistant that works 24/7. You’ll no longer have to remember to pay bills, spend hours on holiday shopping or meticulously plan and book the perfect vacation. Instead, an AI agent will be able to respond to your every need, including choosing the most rewarding payment method for each purchase, and helping you redeem credit card points in the most optimal way.
This technology is here. People are already trusting AI agents to handle administrative work tasks, conduct research, shop, book travel and even apply for new jobs. AI agent tools like Instinct (currently in invite-only beta testing mode), Meta’s Muse, ChatGPT Work and SpaceXAI’s Grok Bot promise to quietly work for you in the background, like an eager-to-please robot butler.
But this is one of the scary parts of agentic AI (besides the whole “downfall of humanity” thing, should AI eventually conspire against us). Using these tools can require granting agents access to some seriously personal stuff, like your calendar, email inbox and the contents of your wallet. AI agents aren’t perfect, and that can harm you financially if they misinterpret your instructions.
Banking regulation guarantees you can dispute a fraudulent charge when you use a debit or credit card, or an electronic bank transfer. But if you hand your card to an AI agent and it makes a mistake, what recourse do you actually have?
"In the future you might be calling [your card issuer] and saying, ‘I authorized my AI agent, but it didn't act on my instructions correctly,’" says Louis Hoch, CEO of Usio, a payment solutions company, adding that the lack of a clearly defined dispute process may hinder large-scale adoption of such agents.
"Consumers have got to have trust, through the payment rails, that they can get their money back," Hoch says. "And there's no mechanism for that today."
If someone steals your credit card and makes charges on it, you’re not left paying the bill. Federal law limits your liability to $50 if there’s unauthorized use of your card, and most card issuers waive your liability entirely. But there’s an exception to this. If you give your credit card to another person and allow them to use it, you’re responsible for whatever they charge, even if it’s not what you said they could use the card for.
“When you hand your access device to a human and tell them to buy potato chips, and they buy a television, you — the cardholder — are on the hook, not your bank,” says Eric Goldberg, partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, in the banking and financial services practice group.
That’s one of the issues with allowing AI agents access to your credit cards so they can make purchases on your behalf. In doing this, you’re consenting to someone else using your card, no matter what they end up buying.
“You might think you gave clear instructions to the AI tool, but those of us who use AI a lot know there's often a disconnect between what we think we told it to do and what it actually understood,” Goldberg says.
If there were a way to keep a record of the human’s actual intent — as in, how they prompted the AI agent to complete a task — this could become information that’s considered as part of the dispute process in the future. According to Hoch, if user intent were to be built into the dispute process, this could help determine if the consumer has chargeback rights if the AI agent doesn’t follow their instructions.
Who takes the blame when an AI agent makes an error?
The unsatisfying answer is: It depends.
When an AI agent has a pair of jeans shipped to you and they don’t fit, getting your money back shouldn’t be an issue.
“If your agent made a purchase at a retailer, there should be an ability to return the purchase from that retailer, because remember, when your agent makes a purchase, it's going to an existing channel that already exists today, on your behalf,” says Mike Storiale, senior vice president, AI technology and transformation at Synchrony. “So that return process should be relatively easy to fall back on. The harder question is what happens when it's rogue, and the merchant, the user and the financial institution all feel like they weren't responsible for it.”
But not every mistake is as simple as returning one item to a merchant. Things get more complex if your agent, say, signs a multi-year arrangement with a new home internet service provider when you simply wanted it to comparison shop and go no further.
Right now, who’s at fault can depend on which AI agent tool you use. Instinct, for example, places the blame on you if an agent takes an incorrect action. Its terms also state that it can enter into binding agreements on your behalf. Muse, on the other hand, provides some purchase protection up to specific dollar amounts for eligible purchases. This is similar to the purchase protection you can get with credit cards if an item you buy gets stolen or damaged, but Muse's protection is subject to limitations.
No changes to federal regulations have been made yet to assign liability when people give AI agents access to their bank accounts and credit cards, according to a January 2026 report from the Consumer Bankers Association. This uncertainty could make people hesitant to fully embrace agentic AI.
“For widespread adoption to happen, the industry has to create a trust factor,” Hoch says, "so the consumer knows they have the same type of protection they'd have today if they dropped their credit card in a parking lot and somebody said, 'Ooh, let's go shopping on Amazon.'”
A hybrid approach that keeps humans involved
A compromise that could improve an AI agent’s accuracy when it comes to personal finance? More human-to-agent interaction. Instead of the agent completing a complex, multi-step financial transaction completely on its own, it would seek the user’s permission at various points before proceeding. Muse, for example, is designed to check back in before sending emails or making purchases.
Hoch predicts that a digital wallet specifically for your agent could help users set stronger parameters and feel more in control.
“I wouldn't have a problem letting an AI agent pay my bills for the month, if I put, say, $10,000 into a wallet only my agent has access to — a tokenized Mastercard just for that purpose, maybe even prepaid, reloaded each month, so I know my biggest risk at any point is $10,000," he says.
While this would put some of the work back on you to manage your agent and approve more actions, it could prevent serious, expensive errors. So for now, at least, your robot butler still needs you to weigh in on its work a few times a day.
“Humans are good at making decisions and evaluating,” Storiale says, “But the agent is really good at making the busy work go away.”
