Claude can now read your bank and card accounts and answer money questions

What Anthropic launched

Anthropic has added a Personal Finance feature to Claude, its AI chatbot. As The Times of India reported, you can link your bank and card accounts and then ask questions about your money in everyday language. The aim is to spare you from hopping between several banking apps to work out where your money is going.

The launch follows a similar move from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. It is a beta, which means an early version still being tested, and it is limited for now. Only US users on Claude's Pro, Max or Ultra plans in the beta group will see it, and you will find it in Claude's sidebar if it has been turned on for you.

What you can ask it

The questions can be broad or specific. You might ask where your money went this month, whether you are spending more than you earn, or what an APR (the yearly interest rate on borrowing) is and how much interest you have paid so far this year. Claude answers from the balances and transactions in your linked accounts, and it explains unfamiliar financial terms as it goes.

Anthropic gave one example. A person ten days before payday asks where the money has gone. Claude adds up spending across the linked accounts and sorts it into categories. It then compares against earlier months, points out a membership that is about to renew, and lists four bills that will leave the checking account before payday, along with what will be left afterward.

Claude can also scan all your accounts for problems that are easy to overlook. Examples include being charged twice for the same thing, fees you did not expect, or a bill that has slowly crept up over the year. You can ask for a weekly spending chart, a calendar of upcoming payments, or a dashboard of the figures you care about, and then keep tweaking it.

How access and privacy are handled

Anthropic stresses that the access is read-only. Claude can look at your data but cannot move money, manage accounts or make investments for you. The company also says the feature is not meant to give investment advice, and it tells users to check important figures with their bank directly.

The connection runs through Plaid, a financial data network. You sign in with your bank through that service, and Anthropic says Claude never sees or asks for your banking passwords. Once linked, Claude can see account names, balances, how much credit is available on cards, and up to two years of transaction history.

Anthropic adds that conversations inside the Personal Finance hub are not used to train its AI models. You can disconnect an account whenever you like, and after that Claude can no longer reach the data tied to it.

No ads, no products to sell

Anthropic says Personal Finance carries no ads and no sponsored recommendations. It also does not sell credit cards, loans or savings accounts of its own. That matters because many money tools earn their income by steering you toward a product, and Anthropic is saying that is not happening here.

That is a company promise, not something you can check yourself, so it is worth reading the terms before you rely on it. The absence of a sales motive is still a meaningful design choice for a tool that sees your spending.

What comes next

Anthropic calls this a first step. For bigger decisions, such as major purchases or long-term planning, it says people are better served when Claude works alongside licensed professionals and regulated firms. The company says it is exploring how to make that possible, and it is inviting banks, wealth managers and other financial firms that want to help shape it to get in touch.

The price of the feature was not stated in the report beyond its availability on the paid plans. If you are outside the US or on a free plan, you cannot try it yet.