As the tech industry rallies around AI agents, some companies are developing capabilities to allow AI agents to make payments and trade stocks on behalf of users.
Stock trading app Robinhood is also moving in that direction: The company announced Wednesday that it’s launching support for AI-powered dealer trading, as well as a new dealer credit card.
Robinhood said users on its platform can now create a separate account for its AI agents and link them to a dedicated wallet. While these agents will be able to read and analyze users’ portfolios to come up with trading strategies and recommend investments, they will only be able to access the preloaded balance in the dedicated wallet to place orders.
Users will receive notifications of all trades their AI agent makes and will be able to track their activities within the Robinhood app. For some transactions, agents will display a preview that users may need to approve before executing the order. The company said it has also built in fraud detection protection, in which a team from Robinhood will review suspicious transactions and help users resolve disputes.
Robinhood says users can connect their AI agents to its Model Context Protocol (MCP) service to do things like analyze concentration risk and industry exposure, execute trades, or search through analyst notes to identify new investment opportunities in various sectors.
The agent trading feature is starting in beta and only allows stock trading at this time. The company says it plans to add support for options, crypto, event contracts, futures and prediction markets soon.
Robinhood is also introducing a new virtual credit card intended to be used by AI agents. With this card, users can connect their AI agents to the company’s MCP banking server to allow them to make payments.
The virtual card is currently only available to Robinhood Gold Cardholders, who can link their account to this new card.
Users can set monthly limits on this virtual card and can choose whether their AI agent will ask for approval every time they make a payment. The company said the Robinhood Platinum Card will also get support for a similar virtual dealer card feature when it launches later this year.
Robinhood has ramped up its AI efforts in recent years. The company acquired its AI research platform Pluto in 2024 and last year added an AI assistant that offers investment advice.
“We’ve heard a lot of demand from our customers to bring their own tools, LLMs and agents and connect them to Robinhood. That’s why we’re launching our new products,” Abhishek Fatehpuria, VP of Product at Robinhood, told TechCrunch.
Robinhood is not alone in enabling AI agents to make payments, with major players such as Film, AmazonGoogle and newer startups like Prava Pay product builders that empower AI agents to buy things on behalf of users.
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