Privacy policy
Payday (Payday: Budget Planner), com.benbasha.payday. Contact: payday@benbasha.com. Last updated: September 2026.
What Payday is
Payday is a manual-entry budget and expense tracker for people paid on a schedule. You type or dictate what you spend; the app works out when each purchase actually leaves your account (card statement and due dates, installment plans, recurring bills) and how much is left until your next payday. It works fully offline. There are no user accounts, no sign-up, no bank or card linking and no ads. There is no server and no cloud copy of your data.
Data stored only on your device
Everything below is stored locally (an SQLite database plus small preference storage) and is never uploaded:
- your accounts, cards (names, closing and due days), balances you entered;
- every transaction you enter or import, including category, payee and notes;
- installment plans, recurring rules, budgets, pay schedule and region;
- settings (theme, language, currency, Lock Screen amount visibility, Spotlight indexing);
- purchase status (Pro);
- the text you type or dictate into the Say-it field (processed on the device; never uploaded).
Deleting the app deletes all of it. Local recovery snapshots stay inside the app's private container; an external backup is created only when you choose "Back up" and pick where to save it (for example iCloud Drive or Files). That file is yours and under your control.
Widgets, Lock Screen and Siri
The Home Screen widgets, Lock Screen widgets, the "Shopping trip" Live Activity and Siri/Shortcuts read a small projection file kept in the app's private shared container on your device. Amounts are hidden on the Lock Screen by default (Settings → "Hide amounts on Lock Screen"). Your categories and accounts are indexed in Spotlight so you can search for them by name. Spotlight indexing of your transactions is off by default; when you turn it on, their names (never amounts) are indexed too. All of it is done by the system, on your device only.
On-device model (Apple Intelligence)
On supported iPhones and languages, Pro can ask the phone's built-in language model to read a messy spending sentence into a draft entry. This runs entirely on the device with Apple's Foundation Models framework; the sentence is not sent to us or to any server, and it is never used for Private Cloud Compute in this version.
Microphone
Dictation into the Say-it field uses the system keyboard's dictation; Payday itself does not record or process audio.
No bank access
Payday never asks for bank, card or financial-institution credentials and never connects to a bank. The CSV files you import are ones you export yourself from your bank and choose to open in the app; they are processed on the device.
No ads and no tracking
Payday shows no ads and includes no advertising SDK. We do not track you across apps or websites, so there is no App Tracking Transparency prompt. On Android the advertising-ID permission is explicitly blocked. Google Analytics for Firebase — the one component that would have collected an advertising-style profile — is switched off entirely (see below).
Analytics and crash reports
To learn which features are used and to fix problems, Payday uses exactly two services: Mixpanel for usage events, and Firebase Crashlytics for crash reports. Google Analytics for Firebase is NOT used — it is deactivated in the app's iOS and Android builds and no code in the app can turn it on — so no Google analytics event, and none of the automatic collection that comes with it, is ever sent. Mixpanel's IP geolocation is switched off, so no location is derived from your connection either. Nothing from these two services (analytics and crash reports) leaves your device before you have saved your first transaction. A few setup events recorded before it (the app being opened, the onboarding steps, the paywall being shown) are held on your device and sent together with it; if you never save a transaction, they are never sent. Crash reports are kept on the device until then too, and are uploaded only once collection has started.
What is collected:
- general, aggregate usage events (for example: transaction saved, projected item confirmed, paywall viewed, region changed) with coarse, non-identifying properties (kind of entry, whether it was a card, how it was entered, region code, pay-schedule kind);
- platform, app version, language, and Pro status (yes/no);
- crash reports (stack traces and device model) with no financial data;
- a random, anonymous install identifier (not the advertising ID, not the IDFA).
What is never collected or sent: your name, email, phone, location of any kind (precise or coarse, including any location derived from your IP address), amounts, balances, account or card names, payees, notes, the text you type into Say-it, imported files, contacts, or any identifying information. An allowlist in the app blocks any event property named amount, note, payee, name or text. Data is not sold and there is no cross-app tracking. Analytics data is transmitted over HTTPS.
Region detection
Payday reads the region setting of your phone once, to pre-fill currency, pay schedule and card defaults. It never uses GPS or location services and never asks for location permission. You can change the region in Settings at any time.
Purchases
Pro is a one-time purchase (no subscription) made through the Apple App Store or Google Play. Payment details never reach us; we only learn whether the purchase succeeded. Restore is available at no charge. Purchases are per platform.
Deletion
All your data is on your device; deleting the app deletes it completely (external backup files you saved elsewhere are yours to delete). To ask us to delete analytics events tied to your anonymous install identifier, email payday@benbasha.com from the device (include the app version) and we will action it.
Children
Payday is a general-audience personal-finance utility and is not directed at children. It does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone.
Financial data
Payday is not a financial institution, does not provide financial advice and does not access financial accounts. Everything it shows is computed from what you entered.
Store privacy label (declaration guide)
- Data linked to you: none.
- Data not linked to you: Identifiers (anonymous install id), Usage Data (aggregate analytics), Diagnostics (crash data).
- Tracking: none. Financial info: not collected (stored on device only).