Privacy Policy

Last updated September 15, 2026

WalletIQ is a free budgeting app, built in Ontario, Canada. This page explains what we collect, why, and what you can do about it — in plain language, not legalese. If anything here is unclear, email hello@walletiq.ca.

What we collect

• Account info. When you sign in with Google, we receive your name and email address from Google to identify your account.
• Financial data you provide. Transactions you upload via CSV bank statements, enter manually, or import from a saved backup file — including dates, merchant descriptions, amounts, and the categories/tags you (or our automatic categorization) assign. Also anything else you enter: income figures, a starting balance, savings goals ("set asides"), and forecast adjustments.
• Financial data from connected banks. If you choose to connect a bank account, we use Plaid Inc. to retrieve your transaction history directly from your bank. We only request Plaid's Transactions data — we never request or use anything that would let us move money, and Plaid's own privacy policy also governs how they handle your information in transit. Your bank login credentials go directly to your bank or Plaid — we never see or store them.
• Household sharing. If you invite someone to your household (or accept an invite), you're sharing the same budget data with each other — every household member can see and edit everything in that household. There's no per-member privacy within a shared household.
• Waitlist signups. If you join our early-access waitlist, we store the email address you provide.
• "Make them compete" requests. Only if you explicitly opt in per category: we record which category, the vendor currently dominating it, and an email address (yours, or one you provide) to pass along to companies who compete for that request.
• Local device storage. We use your browser's local storage for autosave, your dark-mode preference, and other convenience features. This isn't shared with us — it lives on your device.
• Optional AI chat. If you turn on the in-app chat feature, you supply your own Anthropic API key (stored only in your browser, never sent to us). When you ask a question, we send Anthropic a summary of your spending by month and category — not your individual transaction line items — along with your question, using your key. That request goes directly from your browser to Anthropic; we never see it.
• Merchant recognition. Separately from the chat feature above, when a merchant in your transactions isn't one we already recognize, we send Anthropic, using our own key, that merchant's name as it appears on your statement along with a summary of your history with it — how many transactions, the typical amount and range, how often they recur, which institution they came from, and your bank's own category when available — to identify the merchant, clean up its name, and assign a category. We don't send your account details or your other transactions. Merchants recognized with high confidence are added to a shared WalletIQ directory of merchant names and categories, so they're recognized instantly for everyone. That directory contains no amounts, no dates, nothing that identifies you, and never payments to individuals. Each merchant is sent at most once per household, and a "Recognize merchants" button is available in the app to catch up older transactions.
• Personalized categories. Only when you click to build or rebuild your categories, or to break one category down into subcategories: we send Anthropic, using our own key, a summary of your spending — average monthly totals by type of spending, the names of the merchants that make up large parts of it, and the names of your current categories — so it can suggest categories that fit your household. We don't send individual transactions, dates, or account details. You see the proposed categories and decide whether to apply them.
• "Where can I cut back?" spend analysis. Only when you click it, on the Household Overview page: we send Anthropic, using our own key, your spending totals by category for the time window you select, the same totals for the prior period for comparison, and your largest individual transactions in that window (dates, amounts, merchant names, categories) to get specific suggestions on where to cut back. This is more detail than automatic categorization sends, is never automatic, and is rate-limited per household.

How we use it

To run the features you're actually using: show your budget, sync it across your devices and household members, remember how you've categorized things, and generate cashflow forecasts. If you opt in to "Make them compete" for a specific category, we use the relevant spend data to request competing offers on your behalf.

How we make money

WalletIQ's core budgeting features are free, permanently — no paywall on your own data. We make money in two ways, both opt-in:

• When you ask us to shop a bill around and you switch providers as a result, the company that won your business pays us. You're never charged for this.
• We may let a company reach an anonymous audience segment — for example, "households who spend heavily on telecom" — without ever revealing who you are or what you personally bought.

We may also use, share, or sell transaction-level or other data — including with third parties, for advertising, marketing, or other monetization purposes — as an additional way of supporting the free product. If our practices here change materially, we'll update this policy.

Who we share data with

We use a small number of service providers to run WalletIQ, each only for what they need to do their job:

• Google — sign-in.
• Supabase — database, authentication, and server-side functions that store and sync your budget data.
• Plaid Inc. — only if you connect a bank account, to retrieve transaction data from your financial institution.
• Anthropic — for the optional chat feature (a spending summary, using your own API key), for merchant recognition (merchant names with a summary of your history with each, using our own key), for designing personalized categories (a summary of spending by type and merchant names, using our own key, only when you click it), and for the "Where can I cut back?" spend analysis (category totals and your largest transactions, using our own key, only when you click it).
• Vercel — hosting for this website.

We may also share data with additional third parties for the monetization purposes described in "How we make money" above.

How long we keep data, and deleting it

Your household's budget data is kept for as long as your account is active. We keep a short rolling history of recent versions (the last ~30 saves) so you can restore an earlier version if you make a mistake — this means data you delete may still exist in that short-term history for a while before it ages out.

The "Delete everything" option in the app clears your transaction data. To fully close an account, delete a household, or ask what data we hold about you, email hello@walletiq.ca — we don't yet have a fully automated self-serve flow for this, so we'll handle it directly.

Security

Household data is protected by database-level access rules, so only signed-in members of a household can read or write that household's data — nobody else, including other WalletIQ users, can access it. If you connect a bank account, the access token Plaid gives us is stored server-side only and is never exposed to your browser or any client-side code.

Children's privacy

WalletIQ isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, or delete your personal information, or to ask how it's used. Canadian users are covered by PIPEDA. To exercise any of these rights, email hello@walletiq.ca.

Changes to this policy

If we make a material change to how we handle your data, we'll update the date at the top of this page and, where practical, let you know in the app.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: hello@walletiq.ca.