More People Are Letting AI Choose Their Credit Cards; Should You Try It Too?

The 2026 CardCon conference recently wrapped up following three days of networking and presentations from some of the leading experts in the credit card and financial marketing spaces. 

Artificial intelligence was a common theme in the presentations and conversations at this year’s event. The technology presents significant opportunities to companies in a position to harness its power. But others in the industry are uncertain about how people will continue to use AI to help manage their finances.

CardRates was on the ground for the 2026 version of CardCon, which took place in sunny Phoenix. And our team was energized by all we learned about the role AI plays in a consumer’s quest to locate the right credit card.

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Jason Steele, Founder of CardCon, shone a light on an issue people in the industry are wrestling with. He noted that top experts in the card arena have yet to grasp how AI is affecting the financial marketing environment. But card companies want to get a better handle on how consumers use AI to shop for new credit cards.

“Consumers are shifting how they search and consume information,” Steele told us. “And in turn, the industry is shifting its strategy to accommodate consumers, because that’s all you can do. The consumers are always in charge.”

People have long turned to the internet to get more information about a product or service they have an interest in. But AI may be changing people’s minds about which financial products best suit their circumstances.

A Motley Fool Money survey conducted in April 2023 shows that 54% of the people the company surveyed have used ChatGPT to access a recommendation on a financial tool other than an investment product. And 26% of that group specifically used ChatGPT for its credit card recommendations.

In fact, the most popular financial product survey respondents said they used ChatGPT to get recommendations for were credit cards, coming in slightly ahead of both checking accounts and debit cards.

When you think back to how you used to get financial advice and compare it to the methods you use today, you probably notice a substantial difference in the two approaches.

Depending on your age, you may have once solely relied on feedback from family and friends to inform your financial decisions because the internet either didn’t exist at the time or you didn’t have access to it.

As the internet evolved, you likely came to rely on advice from sources such as a financial influencer who did all the research on new tools so you didn’t have to. But people may now prefer to use a service such as ChatGPT as a starting point in their search for a new credit card because it puts them in the driver’s seat of the process.

Using AI for that purpose won’t produce a perfect answer every time, but people may trust the technology more than financial experts who can put their own interests first when recommending products.

At the conference, we spoke with Christopher McFarland, SVP, Finance Vertical at CJ, one of the world’s largest affiliate marketing firms and one of the conference’s keynote speakers. He told us that consumers trust banks to keep their transactions safe from fraud, but they may not trust them to have their best interests in mind in regard to their overall finances.

One of the benefits of using an AI tool to find a new credit card is it may be able to take input from users and present them with a product they have never considered — or perhaps never even heard of.

ChatGPT is changing how people find credit cards, and the industry is still figuring out how to show up inside the AI “black box." News editor @OtherAdamWest spoke with Julia Altmann from @Natural_Int among others at CardCon 2026. Read the full story 👇 https://t.co/NEUcu1asPx pic.twitter.com/O1KfSHFjxs

— CardRates Industry News (@CardRatesNews) April 29, 2026

Julia Altmann, Content Team Lead at Natural Intelligence, is another expert we caught up with at CardCon. Altmann explained to us that consumers who interact with AI interfaces are able to ask them questions that are broader than those a traditional search engine can handle.

“Users are being given the opportunity to kind of expand the scope of what they thought they needed,” Altmann told us. “Maybe their intent was to look for a card with a 21-month intro APR. But maybe they’ll end up with a totally different card because it actually met their need in an equal but different way.”

As developers continue to enhance the efficacy of AI programs that can help consumers find the right financial products, you can be sure that credit card companies will be closely watching to see how people interact with those systems. 

After all, credit card issuers, like the cardholders they serve, are still learning about AI and how it responds to different questions users pose.

But a recent report from TD Bank highlights how people feel about using AI to inform their financial decisions. And the information from the company suggests that, for some people, it’s hard to shake old habits. 

The report indicated that while 78% of Americans say they routinely use AI-powered tools, only 18% of the people TD surveyed revealed they trust AI to give recommendations on its own about financial matters.

“What this year’s data makes clear is that Americans are not resisting AI, they’re redefining the role they want it to play,” Ted Paris, Head of Analytics, Intelligence, & AI at TD Bank U.S., said in a post on the company’s website. “They want speed and simplicity, but they still expect people to be accountable for the outcomes.”