An AI agent should not read the screen of a financial app, simulate taps on it or operate it automatically without the financial institution’s explicit authorisation, according to a joint initiative published on October 30 by the Beijing Fintech Industry Alliance (北京金融科技产业联盟) and 15 institutions. Signatories include China Development Bank, ICBC, Bank of China and three other large state-owned banks, Huatai Securities, PICC, Huawei and Alibaba Cloud.
The document sets ten principles for agents used in finance, among them trusted identity, defence against prompt injection, traceable decisions and human confirmation. Data taken by screenshot or screen recording must follow the security policy of the app being called, and agents may not bypass or downgrade its protections. Access should be granted per scenario on a minimum-necessary basis, and high-risk operations need an emergency stop that works in real time. The National Financial Technology Certification Center, the National Financial Technology Risk Monitoring Center, Hygon, Qi An Xin and NSFOCUS also signed.
The screen-reading rule repeats a group standard the alliance issued in August 2026, T/BFIA070-2026, which says third-party agents on phones may not use system permissions to read or operate the interface of financial apps without authorisation. In June 2026 the National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA) told banks and insurers to keep human oversight at critical steps of high-risk AI uses and to set conditions for shutting a model down.
Why it matters: On October 21, the refusal list of 155 apps took ByteDance’s Doubao phone assistant out of bank and payment apps, a choice made app by app. This initiative puts five large state-owned banks, the two national fintech centres and Huawei behind the same objection to screen takeover by phone-level agents. The document is voluntary, so watch whether NFRA or the People’s Bank of China turns the authorisation rule into supervision, and what a sanctioned agent link to a bank app looks like.
Sources: 第一财经 Yicai, October 30, 2026; 上海证券报 Shanghai Securities News via 同花顺 10jqka, October 30, 2026; 经济参考网 Economic Information Daily via 21经济网 21jingji, October 30, 2026 (Chinese-language sources, translated)
Image: N509FZ, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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