Privacy Policy
Spendit is a personal finance app made in Canada. This policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the rights you have over your data under Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA).
Information we collect
We only collect what we need to make Spendit work.
Account information
- Email address
- Name (if you provide one)
- Password (stored as a one-way hash — never in plain text)
Financial information (via Plaid)
- Bank and credit card account names, balances, and transactions
- Transaction merchant, date, amount, and category
- Institution identifiers (e.g. which bank you connected)
We never receive or store your banking username or password. Those go directly to Plaid — see Section 3.
Information you enter
- Financial goals (name, target amount, target date)
- Challenge participation, income sources, budget targets
- Chat messages you send to the AI Coach
- Category overrides and transaction exclusions
Device and technical information
- Device type, operating system version, app version
- Push notification token (if you grant permission)
- Crash logs and error diagnostics (device model, OS, stack trace — no personal content)
- IP address (used for the PIPEDA consent log entry when you delete your account)
Subscription information
- Whether you have an active Spendit Pro subscription
- Which product you subscribed to (monthly, yearly, lifetime)
- Subscription expiry date
Payment card details are handled entirely by Google Play — Spendit never receives or stores them.
How we use your information
We use your information to:
- Provide the core Spendit service (transactions, goals, budgets, insights)
- Categorize transactions and detect income, spending patterns, and savings behaviour
- Generate personalized AI coaching content (weekly briefs, recommendations, challenge feedback)
- Send push notifications you have opted into (weekly briefs, mid-week nudges, bank-disconnection alerts)
- Verify subscription status and gate premium features
- Diagnose and fix bugs (via crash reports)
- Comply with legal obligations under Canadian law
We do not sell your personal information. We do not use it for advertising. We do not share it with data brokers.
Financial data + Plaid
Spendit connects to your financial accounts through Plaid Technologies Inc., a regulated financial data aggregator based in the United States.
- When you link a bank account, your credentials go directly to Plaid. Spendit never sees, receives, or stores your banking username or password.
- Plaid retrieves account balances and transactions on our behalf and shares that data with Spendit.
- Plaid's own privacy practices govern their handling of your credentials. Review Plaid's End User Privacy Policy at plaid.com/legal/#end-user-privacy-policy.
By connecting a bank account through Spendit, you consent to Plaid's End User Services Agreement.
You can disconnect a bank account at any time in Settings → Connected accounts. When you disconnect, we ask Plaid to revoke access to your bank, and we stop pulling new transactions.
AI processing (Anthropic)
Spendit uses Anthropic's Claude AI to generate personalized weekly briefs, spending insights, challenge feedback, and coaching messages.
- To produce these features, we send Anthropic anonymized summaries of your spending patterns — aggregated category totals, goal progress, challenge status, and general behavioural signals.
- Individual transactions with merchant names or personally identifying information are not sent unless you specifically reference them in an AI Coach chat message.
- Anthropic does not use your data to train its models, per their API terms.
AI-generated content may contain errors. See our Terms of Service for the full AI disclaimer — always verify specific figures against your bank statements.
Service providers we use
We use the following third-party service providers to run Spendit. Each is contractually obligated to protect your data and to use it only to provide services to us.
| Provider | Purpose | Data shared |
|---|---|---|
| Plaid Technologies Inc. | Bank connection and transaction data | Bank credentials (Plaid only), account and transaction data |
| Anthropic PBC | AI coaching and insights | Anonymized spending summaries |
| Amazon Web Services (Canada region, ca-central-1) | Hosting infrastructure | All app data, encrypted at rest and in transit |
| AWS Cognito | Account authentication | Email address, hashed password |
| RevenueCat | Subscription management | Purchase state, product ID, anonymized user ID |
| Sentry | Crash reporting | Non-personal error logs, device info |
| Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) | Android push notifications | Push token, notification content |
| Expo Push Service | Push notification routing | Push token, notification metadata |
How we share your information
We do not sell or rent your personal information. We share it only in the following limited situations:
- With service providers listed in Section 5, only to the extent needed to operate Spendit.
- To comply with the law — if we receive a valid legal order (court order, subpoena, or lawful request) from a Canadian authority.
- To protect Spendit or others — to investigate fraud, protect our systems, or defend legal claims.
- In a business transfer — if Spendit is acquired or merged, your data may transfer to the successor under the same protections. We will notify you before this happens.
- With your explicit consent — for any other sharing.
How we protect your data
We take security seriously:
- All data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest (AES-256 on AWS-managed storage).
- Database access is restricted to our production Lambda functions through AWS RDS Proxy, inside a private VPC. There is no public database endpoint.
- Bank credentials never touch our servers — they go straight to Plaid.
- Access tokens for financial connections are stored in AWS Secrets Manager, encrypted with AWS KMS.
- Passwords are stored as one-way hashes.
- We monitor for anomalies via CloudWatch alarms and Sentry.
No system is perfectly secure. If we ever suffer a breach that affects your personal information, we will notify you in accordance with the requirements of PIPEDA.
Data retention and deletion
We keep your information for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account:
- We permanently delete your personal and financial data within 30 days.
- Access tokens for connected banks are revoked with Plaid and deleted from our secrets store.
- Cached data on our service providers is deleted according to their retention schedules (typically within 90 days).
We retain a minimal record after deletion, as required by law:
- A PIPEDA consent log entry recording that you requested deletion (your user ID, the IP address used, and the timestamp).
- Aggregated, anonymized analytics that cannot be linked to you personally.
You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Delete my account, or by emailing hello@spendit.ca. Full details at spendit.ca/delete-account.
Your rights under PIPEDA
Under Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), you have the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you
- Correct inaccurate or incomplete information
- Withdraw your consent to our processing (though this may mean you can no longer use Spendit)
- Delete your data
- Receive a copy of your data in a portable format (data export)
- File a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca) if you believe we've mishandled your data
You can exercise most of these rights directly in the app: Settings → Download my data (portable export) or Settings → Delete my account. For anything else, email hello@spendit.ca and we'll respond within 30 days.
If you are a Quebec resident, Law 25 gives you additional rights, including the right to know what automated decisions we have made about you. Contact us to request this information.
International transfers
Spendit's core infrastructure runs in AWS's Canada (Central) region (Montreal). However, some of our service providers process data outside Canada:
- Plaid processes data in the United States. Data transferred to Plaid is subject to U.S. law.
- Anthropic processes AI requests in the United States.
- Google (Firebase, Play) processes payment and push data in the United States and other regions.
- Sentry processes crash reports in the United States.
By using Spendit, you consent to these cross-border transfers. Each provider has appropriate safeguards in place (Standard Contractual Clauses, data protection agreements, or equivalent).
Children's privacy
Spendit is intended for adults aged 18 or older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 18. If you become aware that a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes (for example, new categories of data collected, new service providers, new uses of your data), we will notify you:
- By email, at least 30 days before the change takes effect, and
- Via an in-app notice on your next launch after the change goes live.
The "Last updated" date at the top of this page always reflects the most recent revision.
How to contact us
For privacy-related questions, requests, or complaints:
- Email: hello@spendit.ca
- Subject line: "Privacy request" (helps us route it quickly)
We aim to respond within 5 business days for routine questions and within 30 days for formal PIPEDA access or correction requests.