Anthropic is testing Claude Money, a feature that reads your bank account
A new Money section has appeared inside the Claude iPhone app, promising to link bank accounts and answer spending questions. OpenAI got there first.
Key points
- Anthropic is testing Claude Money, which lets users link bank accounts to its Claude chatbot on iPhone.
- The Money section appeared inside the Claude iOS app alongside existing tabs for Chats, Code, Artifacts, Dispatch and Cowork.
- OpenAI already offers a near-identical feature in ChatGPT called Finances, connecting to more than 12,000 US financial institutions through Plaid.
- Anthropic hasn't confirmed which banks it will support, how connections will work, or whether the feature will be limited to the United States.
- The references surfaced in the app before any official announcement, so pricing, privacy terms and launch dates are unknown.
Anthropic is quietly testing a way to hook its AI directly into your bank account. A new Money tab has appeared inside the Claude app for iPhone, spotted by the account TestingCatalog and reported by BleepingComputer, sitting alongside the existing Chats, Code, Artifacts and Cowork sections.
"Understand your money with Claude," the page reads. "Link your bank accounts and ask Claude about spending, plans and more." There's a Get started button to connect an account, though most users can't see any of this yet.
My read: this is Anthropic catching up, not breaking ground. OpenAI shipped the same idea first, and the interesting question isn't whether AI can read your statements but who gets to hold the keys once it does. That question carries a little extra weight given that Claude Opus 4.6 breached a real third-party system during a security test last week.
What is Claude Money supposed to do?
It's a personal finance assistant built into the Claude app. Once you link a bank account, you can ask the chatbot questions about your spending, upcoming bills, savings and subscriptions in plain conversation rather than clicking through a banking interface.
That's the pitch. Anthropic hasn't published a full description, the feature isn't live for most people, and we don't yet know which banks are supported, how the connection is made, or whether it'll work outside the United States.
How is this different from ChatGPT?
It isn't, really. OpenAI already offers a feature called Finances inside ChatGPT that does the same job.
ChatGPT Finances lets users connect bank accounts, credit cards and brokerages through Plaid, a company that acts as a middleman between banks and apps. Once connected, ChatGPT can answer questions about spending, bills, net worth and savings. OpenAI says it supports more than 12,000 US financial institutions and doesn't train its AI on the personal data shared this way.
Anthropic will almost certainly use a similar arrangement: Plaid or a competitor sits in the middle, the AI company sees the transaction data, and the bank never speaks to the chatbot directly.
| Feature | Claude Money (Anthropic) | Finances (OpenAI) |
|---|---|---|
| Status | In testing on iOS | Live |
| Platform | Claude iPhone app | ChatGPT |
| Banks supported | Not disclosed | 12,000+ US institutions via Plaid |
| Available in Europe | Unknown, unlikely at launch | Limited |
Should ordinary users be worried?
Not yet, because you can't turn it on. When it does launch, ask the same questions you'd ask any budgeting app: what does the company see, how long do they keep it, and can they use it to train their model.
European users may not get the choice at all. Strict data rules, chiefly the General Data Protection Regulation, make it awkward for AI firms to ingest bank data at scale, and Claude Money seems likely to stay a US-only product for a long time.
One practical note. If and when you connect a bank to any AI chatbot, use an account with limited funds or read-only access where your bank offers it, then check the settings for a switch that keeps your data out of model training.
Common questions
Does Anthropic train Claude on my bank data?
Anthropic hasn't said. OpenAI states it doesn't train on data from its Finances feature, and Anthropic will need to answer the same question clearly before most users trust it with a bank login.
When will Claude Money launch?
There's no announced date. The feature leaked inside the iPhone app ahead of any official reveal, so treat any timeline you see elsewhere as guesswork.
