I built an MCP for Wio Bank | A glimpse into the future of banking

How MCPs are reshaping fintech - and why your customers won’t stay in your app

Hi one-fs crew 👋

Today I’m sharing a deep dive into something I’ve been building and testing - a Model Context Protocol (MCP) for Wio Bank - and why it points to a very different future for fintech.

Here’s what you’ll find in this edition:

🧩 A quick explainer on what MCPs are and why they matter

🏦 The beta MCP for Wio and the tools it unlocks

🤖 Why AI chat apps like Claude and ChatGPT are becoming the new hubs for financial interactions

✅ Real examples of how MCPs work in practice - from checking a single transaction to analysing your takeaway habits 🍔

➡️ What this means for banks, fintechs and the next wave of customer experience

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I built an MCP for Wio Bank
A glimpse into the future of banking

Back in March I wrote my first MCP post. Since then many of you have been asking questions, trying to understand how it really works in practice.

There’s a lot of confusion around MCPs - and a fair bit of hype too. Outside developers already using MCPs in tools like Cursor, most people haven’t yet understood how they work in the real world.

The easiest way to think about an MCP is as a “tool” for your AI. Whether you use AI in a chat app like ChatGPT or Claude, or from within another piece of software like Cursor, an MCP gives that AI extra abilities.

The easiest way to think about an MCP is as a “tool” for your AI.

Take web search. It’s now a standard AI tool, but remember that ChatGPT didn’t have it for two years. Before then, the model could only rely on its training data, which quickly became out of date. I learned that the hard way when I first used ChatGPT to code a banking app. The API I wanted to use had changed, and the generated code didn’t work.

It soon became obvious that AI chat apps needed to plug into external tools to stay relevant and take action.

I’ve long believed AI would fragment into smaller, specialised tools rather than one big monolith - a marketplace of connectors and integrations.

The MCP launch

In November 2024, Anthropic (the team behind Claude) introduced a standard way to connect these tools. They called it the Model Context Protocol - MCP. The idea is simple: use a common format so any AI app can plug into any tool with minimal effort.

Fast-forward to today and over 300 apps already support MCPs, including OpenAI and Microsoft, who recently announced native MCP support across Windows.

So what does this mean for your fintech or digital bank - and for customers?

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, put it bluntly:

“People in college use ChatGPT as an operating system.”

It’s a shift worth paying attention to. More and more people are staying within AI chat apps to research, plan and act. With voice mode and the ability to share media or even your whole screen, we’re edging towards personal assistants that can optimise every area of life - including finances.

I expect app usage (outside entertainment and social) to drop sharply in the next few years, much as online banking gave way to mobile banking.

The wio bank mcp

A quick note: the MCP I created isn’t official. Wio Bank didn’t build it. I chose Wio for this personal experiment because I rate their team and their tech. I also used Claude as my main chat app, though I often use ChatGPT too.

Wio is one of the most advanced digital banks in the UAE, on par with global leaders like Revolut. My MCP connects via Wio’s CSV exports - a workaround until open banking is fully available in the UAE. It’s also possible to the SMS automation I built for my first banking app, reading Wio’s SMS alerts and centralising them in a database.

✨ How Wio builds its cutting-edge products | An exclusive in-depth interview with Wio's Head of Design, Todd Webb

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