US Banks: Reading the Tea Leaves — Musing: Watch deposit betas, not app downloads

This BofA Global Research industry overview on US banks examines the potential impact of agentic AI on bank deposits, using the rapid adoption of Meta Platforms' Muse as the entry point. Bank stocks came under pressure on concerns that agentic AI erodes the customer inertia underpinning low-cost deposits. In our view, the next phase of deposit disruption is not faster money movement but reduced decision latency. Developments such as PayPal enabling checkout via Muse and Amazon blocking Muse underscore that scaled platforms are plugging payment credentials into third-party agents, narrowing the gap between "find me a better product and pay for it" and "find me a better yield and move my excess cash." For banks, the proof point is not downloads, daily-active-users or app-store rankings but deposit betas;