Sygnum Bank tests AI agents for live transactions

(CONNECT) Sygnum, a global digital asset banking group headquartered in Zurich and Singapore, has become the first regulated bank in Switzerland to test an AI agent for live on-chain transactions, according to a press release. The agent uses texts written by customers without formatting codes (plain text instructions) to execute multi-stage live transactions on a blockchain mainnet. To do this, the AI plans steps independently, checks relevant smart contracts and highlights potential transaction risks. Once planning is complete, each transaction is presented to the customer for approval.

The system is based on the so-called human-in-the-loop design, which is a core principle of the AI@Sygnum development team. The AI-supported transactions are therefore only signed via the customer's self-custody digital wallet on their own device. Private keys thus remain on the customer's own device and under their control at all times.

"The key challenge is to maintain - and even improve - bank-standard consent, custody and trust," Thomas Frei, Head of AI, Data Analytics and AI@Sygnum, is quoted as saying. "This is exactly what we want to solve, and this pilot shows that a regulated Swiss bank can offer its clients the speed, convenience and accessibility of agent-driven execution without ever giving up control of their assets."

The pilot was developed with the open standard Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and uses Anthropics Claude as the underlying AI model. The AI agent is not yet available to customers, as its use is still subject to full regulatory, compliance and security checks as well as corresponding approvals. ce/ja