Poppy: the rulebook banks want AI agents to follow

Poppy, the Personal Agent Protocol published by Meta and Sierra in October 2026, is a shared rulebook for AI agents that act on your behalf at a bank: an agent says who it is, the customer sets limits on what it may do, and the bank can see both. Banks including Bank of America and Wells Fargo have signed on as design partners.

It's an encouraging sign of where banking is heading, because it describes the world Era is built for, in which your bank knows which assistants you've approved and each of them works inside limits you chose.

What is the Poppy protocol?

Poppy is an open protocol that lets a bank recognize an AI agent and lets the customer decide how far it can go. Meta and Sierra published it on October 9, 2026, with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chime, OpenAI, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal as design partners, and BBVA has since joined.

The idea is simple to state: an agent that comes to a bank introduces itself, carries the limits its owner gave it, and the bank can treat it as a known guest instead of an anonymous login. American Banker's report on bring-your-own-agent banking and PYMNTS' account of the launch cover the announcement.

Why do banks want a rulebook for AI agents?

Banks have been blocking agents that sign in with a customer's password, because an agent using your login looks the same as you, and nobody can say whose decision a transaction was. Wells Fargo's updated terms take effect on November 24, 2026 and Chase's on January 1, 2027, and both make the customer responsible for what an agent does.

A protocol like Poppy gives banks a way to say yes. Instead of banning every agent they can't identify, they can welcome the ones that identify themselves and respect the limits their owner set, and that is a much better place for customers to be than a patchwork of blocks.

What does Poppy mean for you?

For you it points to a future in which you hand an assistant a defined job and a defined limit, the bank knows about it, and everyone can see afterwards who did what. You'd be setting limits once, in a place you control, instead of sharing a password and hoping.

That future arrives bank by bank, and in the meantime you can already work this way. Era is one authorised hub that your bank approves and every assistant connects to, and it follows the same spirit as Poppy: each assistant is identified, approved on its own and kept inside the access you gave it.

How does Era work in the same spirit?

Era treats every assistant as a named, separate guest. You link your banks once through a connection your bank approves, each assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Muse and the rest) is approved on its own consent screen, and the API keys page lists every one of them so you can see who has access.

You choose what each can do, by keeping its access read-only or allowing edits, and you can cut one off with Revoke and Revoke key without touching your bank link or the others. Moving money between your own accounts is in private beta, it's off by default for every key, and every transfer needs your approval, which is the same instinct as a limit that the customer sets.

Because the hub is shared, so is the memory: tell Claude your goal once and ChatGPT and Gemini already know it. Which AI assistants can connect to your bank lays out the route for each assistant, and how to audit an AI agent managing your money shows how to check what each one has done.

Do I have to wait for Poppy to use an assistant with my bank?

No. Era connects accounts across the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and 40+ countries in all, and every assistant that supports MCP or an API key can use the hub today. Poppy will make the picture even tidier as banks adopt it, and the hub you set up now carries straight over.