ChatGPT is learning to read statements. And understand them

On May 15, 2026, OpenAI announced a new experimental feature for subscribers of the highest consumer tier, ChatGPT Pro. Users in the USA can for the first time securely link their banking, investment, and credit accounts directly with ChatGPT and get a comprehensive overview of their finances in one dashboard.

According to the official blog, this is not an isolated novelty. OpenAI states that more than 200 million people use ChatGPT for financial queries every month, whether it's budgeting, comparing investment strategies, or planning larger purchases. The new feature is meant to convert this interest into a structured service that combines real account data with advanced reasoning by the language model.

How linking works and what you see

The technical connection is provided by the American service Plaid, which allows applications to securely communicate with financial institutions. OpenAI lists support for more than 12,000 banks and financial institutions. The user logs in via Plaid directly in the ChatGPT interface, either in the side panel under the "Finances" tab or with the command "@Finances, connect my accounts".

After authorization, ChatGPT synchronizes and categorizes data. The result is an interactive dashboard that displays investment portfolio performance, monthly expenses, active subscriptions, upcoming payments, and other key indicators. The user can ask questions in natural language, such as: "Which subscriptions can I cancel?", "How have my expenses changed in the last year?" or "How much did my vacation cost when I add up all cards and accounts?"

An important element is also the so-called Financial memories. ChatGPT can remember context that the user shares beyond linked accounts, such as a savings goal, a loan from family, or a planned car purchase. This memory then enriches future conversations and the AI can connect current data with long-term goals.

A model that also accounts for emotions

Financial questions are often complex and highly individual. The correct answer must take into account income, expenses, debts, goals, and time horizons simultaneously. OpenAI therefore built the new feature on the GPT-5.5 Thinking model, i.e. a version of its latest language model optimized for reasoning.

For Pro subscribers, an even more powerful GPT-5.5 Pro is available, which scored 82.5 out of 100 on the internal benchmark, while standard GPT-5.5 Thinking achieved 79 points. The rating was created in collaboration with more than 50 financial professionals from leading institutions and measures the quality and accuracy of answers on demanding personal financial tasks. OpenAI described this benchmark as an internal tool for long-term model improvement.

What it can do today and what it promises for tomorrow

In the current preview version, ChatGPT can analyze trends, generate multi-year budget plans, identify duplicate or unused subscriptions, and warn about risky investments in the portfolio. The user can, for example, request a five-year savings plan for housing considering current cash flow and the local real estate market.

But OpenAI is announcing a more ambitious vision: a shift from answers to actions. In cooperation with partners like Intuit, ChatGPT should in the future not only recommend a credit card but also estimate the probability of approval and directly submit the application. Similarly, it could move from explaining the tax implications of selling stocks to securing a tax estimate and scheduling a consultation with a live expert, all within a single chat window.

Security: who sees your money?

Sharing banking data with an AI model naturally raises questions about privacy. OpenAI emphasizes several security guarantees in its announcement:

• ChatGPT does not see full account numbers and cannot make any changes to accounts.
• Linked data is protected by the same model training settings that the user uses in regular conversations. They can be changed at any time in settings.
• After disconnecting the account, synchronized data is deleted within 30 days from OpenAI systems.
• Financial memories can be viewed or deleted at any time directly in the Finances section.
• When using temporary chats (temporary chats), ChatGPT does not access linked accounts at all.

The company also recommends activating multi-factor authentication (MFA) to protect against unauthorized access to the account.

Price and availability: the Czech market is still waiting

The new feature is currently available only to subscribers of ChatGPT Pro in the United States, on the web and in the iOS app. OpenAI confirmed that after evaluating feedback, it plans to expand to the lower Plus tier and in the long term to free accounts as well.

ChatGPT Pro costs $200 per month (approximately 4,500 CZK), which is the highest consumer tariff offering unlimited access to GPT-5.5 Thinking and GPT-5.5 Pro models, faster responses, and extended limits for deeper research and agents.

For Czech and European users, the feature remains locked for now. OpenAI does not specify a concrete launch date in Europe, not least due to regulation. Linking bank accounts in the EU is subject to the PSD2 directive, which imposes strict requirements for strong customer authentication (SCA) and data control. At the same time, OpenAI must meet the requirements of GDPR and the upcoming AI Act, which classifies systems influencing financial decision-making as high-risk. Czech banks are not yet natively represented in the Plaid ecosystem, which would require seeking alternative aggregators or direct banking APIs.

Competition is not idle

Investment in AI in personal finance is not the exclusive domain of OpenAI. Its rival Anthropic recently introduced financial agents for the enterprise sector, Google is integrating money services into the Gemini ecosystem, and traditional fintech applications like Mint or YNAB have long offered automated expense categorizations. The difference lies in the depth of reasoning: while older tools primarily sort transactions, ChatGPT promises contextual planning, prediction, and interactive decision-making in natural language.

Conclusion

OpenAI is entering the world of personal finance cautiously, but purposefully. The preview in ChatGPT Pro shows that artificial intelligence can be not only a creator of texts and code, but also a personal financial assistant that connects data from dozens of sources and makes sense of it. For Czech users, it is still a distant future, but the signal is clear: the boundaries between conversational AI and banking are beginning to blur. Once the feature reaches Europe, it will likely be at the cost of thorough regulatory scrutiny and adaptation to local banking standards.