Asked ChatGPT to pay a vendor from Mercury? It only queues the payment until you approve it in Mercury

#What changed

On Oct 15, Mercury turned on actions in its hosted MCP server. Until now the connection could only answer questions about your accounts. Now ChatGPT, Claude, or another MCP client can request a payment to an existing recipient, request a transfer between your own Mercury accounts, create or edit custom expense categories, and update a transaction's note or category. Mercury CEO Immad Akhund announced it on X, and Mercury's release notes and MCP docs describe how it works.

The key detail is the split between two kinds of actions. Payment and transfer requests never send money on their own: the agent creates a request, and a person has to approve it inside Mercury. Category and note changes skip that step and apply immediately.

#Who is affected

Mercury business and personal customers who connect Mercury to ChatGPT, Claude, or a coding agent such as Codex through the MCP. Existing read-only connections do not get write access automatically. Your organization's approval policies still apply, and the MCP is still labeled Beta.

#What to do now

• Reconnect Mercury in ChatGPT or Claude once and grant only the write scopes you need on Mercury's consent screen. If you only want help with bookkeeping, you can skip the payment and transfer scopes.
• Treat "request created" in chat as a draft, not a payment. Open Mercury, find the request under Needs approval in Tasks or Payments, check the recipient, amount, payment method, and timing, then approve it there.
• If a chat result is unclear, ask the agent to list pending payment or transfer approval requests before it creates another one, so you don't end up with duplicates.
• Spot-check recategorization runs in Mercury afterward, because those edits land without a second approval.
• Don't let untrusted documents, sites, or other tools feed instructions into a chat that has Mercury write access. Mercury's own security guide warns that the approval gate doesn't stop data leaks or unwanted category and note edits.

#What is not confirmed

Whether the Mercury connector is available inside dots, and how it behaves in long-running agent runs, isn't covered in Mercury's docs. DotsFeed has not tested a live payment request.

#Sources

• Immad Akhund on X: https://x.com/immad/status/2110744322459173347
• Mercury release notes (Oct 15, 2026): https://mercury.com/releases
• Mercury MCP supported tools: https://docs.mercury.com/docs/supported-tools-on-mercury-mcp
• Connecting Mercury MCP: https://docs.mercury.com/docs/connecting-mercury-mcp
• Mercury MCP security best practices: https://docs.mercury.com/docs/security-best-practices