AI Agents Could Threaten Low-Cost Bank Deposits, Apollo Economist Warns

AI agents that automatically manage household finances could contribute to a bank run by shifting cash from low-yield checking accounts into higher-paying alternatives, according to Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok.

In a Sunday note titled “Is an Agentic bank run coming?”, Slok warned that personal AI assistants could eventually manage consumers’ cash balances and move money between financial institutions without requiring users to make each decision themselves.

He pointed to Meta’s personal agent Muse and similar agentic AI systems as examples of technology that could automatically redirect idle household cash into higher-interest accounts. That could challenge the roughly 0.1% national average annual interest rate currently offered on checking accounts.

Slok is a widely followed investment economist on Wall Street and a partner at private-equity firm Apollo Global, which manages approximately $1 trillion in assets.

He noted that companies including Revolut, SoFi, Varo, LendingClub and Wealthfront offer deposit rates ranging from 3.3% to 5% annually. On a $10,000 balance, those rates could generate roughly $100 to $500 in annual interest, compared with about $10 at a 0.1% checking-account rate.

Slok said widespread adoption of agentic AI for cash management could therefore pressure banks, whose lending businesses depend in part on inexpensive deposits. A large movement of deposits toward higher-yielding alternatives could increase banks’ funding costs and create broader financial-system risks.

“If every household used AI agents to optimize the return on their cash balances, banks could lose a large share of the cheap deposits they rely on to make loans,” Slok wrote, arguing that such a shift could become a problem for the financial system as a whole.

What Is Agentic Finance?

Agentic finance describes AI systems that can take actions on a user’s behalf rather than simply respond to questions.

Such systems could monitor account balances continuously, compare interest rates between financial institutions, transfer idle funds into higher-yield accounts and return money to a primary account when upcoming bills need to be paid.

Estimates for the size of the emerging market differ considerably. Mordor Intelligence estimates that agentic AI in financial services will reach $7.78 billion in 2026 and grow to $43.52 billion by 2031. MarketsandMarkets, meanwhile, estimates the narrower AI agents segment at approximately $845 million in 2025.

Crypto Builds Payment Infrastructure

Crypto networks are already developing payment infrastructure that could support autonomous AI transactions.

Coinbase’s x402 protocol, described as the most widely used agentic payment standard, allows AI agents to pay for online services using stablecoins within seconds without requiring a traditional account, payment card or human approval.

The x402 Protocol has reportedly processed between approximately 188 million and more than 205 million cumulative transactions, with around 69,000 active agents.

Cloudflare, Google, Visa, Mastercard, AWS, Circle and Stripe have joined the x402 Foundation, which is now governed by the Linux Foundation.

Nate Geraci, co-founder of the ETF Institute, has also previously argued that artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency are emerging technologies that could challenge elements of the traditional banking model.

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