Deposits · August 2026
Varo welcomes AI crawlers yet its signup app stays closed
An AI agent ran five ordinary deposits tasks on the public pages of Varo and scored what each page delivered.
Run 6 August 2026 · five tasks · public pages, logged out · Fintech
69/100
Mystery Agent score
Deposits · rank 7 of 25
Savings rate
92Served as text
Checking comparison
74Partly served
Fee schedule
90Served as text
Routing number
78Served as text
Application page
12Automated reader declined
Summary
- Varo names AnthropicAI and GPTBot by name in robots.txt with a clear Allow, a direct welcome to agent traffic.
- An agent read the complete itemized fee schedule, covering ATM, cash deposit, and credit-builder fees, updated in July 2026.
- Publishing a real llms.txt would close the gap between the site's welcoming robots.txt and the 404 an agent meets today.
Task by task
Each task is scored out of 100 on completion, answer quality and how directly the answer was reached. Each note describes what the page delivered, with a link to the page the answer was found on.
Task 01Savings rateServed as text92 out of 100
The savings page states a rate of 3.75% APY on balances up to $5,000 and 1.00% APY above that, dated accurate as of July 1, 2026, with no monthly fees and no minimum balance.
Task 02Checking comparisonPartly served74 out of 100
Varo markets its single Bank Account on two pages, both agreeing on a $0 monthly fee, no minimum balance, no overdraft fee, free CVS cash deposits, and direct deposit up to two days early.
Task 03Fee scheduleServed as text90 out of 100
The fees page, updated July 2026, itemizes Bank Account ATM and cash deposit charges, confirms the Savings Account carries no fees, and lists Advance, Believe card, and Line of Credit fees by tier.
Task 04Routing numberServed as text78 out of 100
The routing number, 124303201, appears as plain text inside a blog post about tax-season direct deposit, reached through the sitemap several hops from the homepage rather than a dedicated account page.
Task 05Application pageAutomated reader declined12 out of 100
Every 'Get started' button leads to the signup application, which answers a plain fetch with a Cloudflare interstitial message about VPNs and blocked countries rather than the account-opening form itself.
robots.txt names AnthropicAI, GPTBot, and CCBot with an explicit Allow, a direct welcome to agent traffic.
The application page
What the account opening page states to a reader that runs no scripts.
5,517Bytes delivered
327Characters of visible text
0Form fields in the first response
After scripts runWhat an applicant needs
Strengths and opportunities
What is working
- Varo publishes a complete, itemized fee schedule as plain HTML text atthe application path, covering ATM fees, cash deposits, advance tiers, credit builder fees, and line of credit fees in one dated page that needs no script execution to read.
- robots.txt names AnthropicAI, GPTBot, and CCBot with an explicit Allow: /, a deliberate and welcoming policy statement toward agent traffic on the main marketing domain.
- The savings APY, its qualifying balance tiers, and an 'accurate as of' date are all stated directly in delivered text on the savings landing page, one hop from the homepage.
- The bank routing number is delivered as genuine visible text rather than hidden behind a script, even though it takes a few hops through the sitemap to reach.
Opportunities
- Publish a real llms.txt file. The site already tells crawlers they are welcome in robots.txt, but the llms.txt path itself returns a 404 today, a gap between stated intent and what is actually delivered.
Access
Every page the agent requested was delivered on the first attempt. Publishing an llms.txt file would give agent traffic a documented entry point.
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