OpenAI and ChatGPT: 12,000 Connected Banks, France Missing

OpenAI Connects ChatGPT to 12,000 U.S. Banks

Last April, OpenAI quietly acquired Hiro Finance, a financial planning startup founded by entrepreneur Ethan Bloch. This acquisition enabled OpenAI to develop a new "Finance" feature integrated into ChatGPT, unveiled on May 15, 2026. This feature is available to U.S. Pro subscribers for a monthly fee of $100. With this integration, users can connect their bank accounts, credit cards, and investment portfolios directly to the chatbot via the Plaid network. This network allows compatibility with over 12,000 financial institutions, including giants like Chase, Robinhood, Fidelity, and American Express.

ChatGPT as a Budgeting Advisor

ChatGPT's new feature operates similarly to a traditional banking aggregator, but with a significant difference: it is powered by the GPT-5.5 model behind the dashboard. Once accounts are synchronized, ChatGPT can display balances, transactions, recurring subscriptions, and upcoming payments. It is also capable of answering financial questions posed in natural language, such as: "Am I spending more than I was three months ago?" or "How much should I save each month to buy a property in five years?" OpenAI emphasizes that the mode is read-only, meaning the chatbot can view the data but cannot move money or access full account numbers. The synchronized data is deleted within 30 days after disconnection, according to the company's promises.

The previous month, Perplexity also launched its own Plaid integration, signaling that personal finance has become a key playground for AI in 2026. According to OpenAI, 200 million users already ask financial questions to ChatGPT each month, although until now, these questions were not based on real data, which puts the quality of the responses into perspective.

Regulatory Challenges in Europe

This feature is currently limited to the United States, and this is not by chance. In Europe, the Payment Services Directive (PSD2), in effect since January 2018, requires any entity accessing bank accounts to obtain an AISP license from the relevant national authority. In France, this license is issued by the ACPR, the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority. Bankin' (now Bridge in B2B) and Linxo (a subsidiary of Crédit Agricole since 2020) have obtained this license. Plaid, on the other hand, holds a UK license issued by the FCA, but its coverage in the European Economic Area remains limited since Brexit. OpenAI, for its part, has no payment service provider status in France.

The GDPR adds an additional layer of complexity by partially covering the scope of these applications. Although banking data is not considered "sensitive" under Article 9 of the regulation, a transaction history can reveal, by deduction, sensitive information such as medical consultations, union contributions, or donations to religious organizations. The CNIL published two sets of recommendations in February and July 2025 regarding the application of the GDPR to AI systems, highlighting the risk of "regurgitating" personal data in generative models. Transferring a year of Boursorama statements to OpenAI's servers in the United States would pose a problem of transfer outside the EU that the already contested Data Privacy Framework would struggle to accommodate. The European AI Act, which partially came into effect in February 2025, classifies AI systems assessing creditworthiness as "high risk," requiring mandatory compliance audits, algorithmic transparency, and guaranteed human recourse.

A Paradox for French Fintechs

French fintechs like Bankin', Linxo, and Finary enjoy a significant regulatory head start, with ACPR licenses, PSD2 compliance, and data hosted in France. However, none of these players have yet integrated a language model capable of reasoning about a portfolio like GPT-5.5 does. Bankin' offers a predictive AI for month-end, Linxo is preparing a balance forecast for the end of June 2026, and Finary specializes in wealth management. Nothing comes close to a GPT-5.5 capable of cross-referencing your spending with your life goals and responding like a financial advisor—read-only, of course, but an advisor that never sleeps and charges no processing fees.

A Race Between Technology and Regulation

The current situation highlights a race between two models. On one side, OpenAI has the technological power but faces the regulatory wall in Europe. On the other side, French fintechs have the legal framework but not yet the inference engine. The first to combine these strengths could very well win the market for digital financial services.