Why Ask Linc Is Not Just “ChatGPT for Your Bank”

We get this question a lot: “So… you’re basically ChatGPT, but connected to my bank?”

Short answer: no.
Long answer: absolutely not — and here’s why.

The problem with just using ChatGPT for your finances

If you’ve ever pasted a spreadsheet or a transaction list into ChatGPT, you’ve probably had this thought: “Wait… where does this data actually go?”

Here’s the thing: with most AI tools, whatever you give them is sent directly into the AI model. That means your sensitive financial data — account balances, transaction details, maybe even account numbers — all get processed in the same environment as everything else the AI handles.

You don’t have fine-grained control over how much of it gets stored, logged, or used to improve the model. And if that makes you uneasy, it should.

Ask Linc works differently — by design

We built Ask Linc with a dual data layer that keeps your sensitive financial information physically and logically separated from the AI environment.

Here’s how it works:

1. Sensitive financial data layer — Your raw account data lives here, in a secure, isolated environment. This layer never sends your full transaction history, account numbers, or personal identifiers to the AI model.
2. Anonymized context layer — We extract only the specific, relevant details needed to answer your question, strip out anything that could identify you, and send just that to the AI.

Even if someone somehow gained access to the AI layer, all they’d see is generic, context-level info — never your actual accounts or transactions.

We also don’t store your transaction history

When you ask Linc a question, we fetch the data in real time from your accounts (via our secure connection with Plaid), process it, and answer you. Once the question is answered, that raw data is gone — we don’t keep a running archive of your financial life.

And about your bank login…

We never see it. We never store it.
When you connect an account, the login happens entirely inside Plaid’s secure interface. We only get a token that says, “You can access this specific data, with permission from this user.” That token can’t be used to log in or make changes to your account.

Bottom line:
You should never paste your bank data into ChatGPT — or any AI — that wasn’t built for financial privacy from the ground up. Ask Linc was.