MCP Update — Still Paused
Hi folks,
A while back, we had to pause our MCP product. I wanted to provide an update here. Unfortunately, the MCP remains paused for now, but we continue to work on finding a path that can bring it back. It’s not what we want, but we want to provide as much transparency as possible so you can understand the why behind the pause a little better and know that we’re working hard on our end to bring it back.
To provide some context:
- We (Monarch) are of the view that this is your data. We’ve done our best to provide ways for you to access it, modify it, and export it as you see fit. MCP was one of those ways. We think that you should have the choice to decide when, if, and how your data is shared. Some of you do not want to share your data with AI at all. Others do. It's ultimately your choice. For us, it’s really that simple.
- Unfortunately, the financial data ecosystem is not so simple. In addition to us (Monarch) and you (users), there are also data aggregators and financial institutions, each with their own views and concerns about data portability. Until Open Banking regulation (like CFPB’s “1033”) or some other mechanism establishes clear lines, things will continue to be murky.
- Not everyone in the financial data ecosystem views data portability the way we do, so we must be careful not to jeopardize your continued access to your financial data through Monarch.
We’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks having conversations and proposing different ways to alleviate their concerns, and while we’ve made progress, we haven’t found a full solution quite yet. We’ll continue working on this path until we find one, and as soon as we do, we will provide an update.
In the meantime:
- While we can't officially endorse these tools, we’ve seen many users rally around third-party, community-built APIs and MCPs.
- We will continue providing safe ways for you to access your data. For example, we’ve launched CSV import by id so you can more easily export your transactions, modify them, and re-import them.
- We’ve built and are testing a flow that lets you easily switch your connection to your financial institutions from one connector to another (similar to the account transfer flow, but more of a seamless lift-and-shift) in case certain aggregators end up not providing a path we agree with. This tool will eventually be launched for general usage, too.
Again, we apologize that this isn’t the answer you are hoping for. It’s not the one we were hoping for, either, but we’ll continue to provide updates as things evolve.