What happens to your data

This applies to people who already connected a bank. GoCardless isn't just a pipe: it's an authorized institution with its own obligations and its own privacy notice. Here is what its terms say.

What it keeps

The account holder's name, account details and number, balance and transactions for the period you authorize (EU terms, art. 4.1). Not your bank login: it never sees it (art. 4.3).

What it uses them for

Only to provide the service. The terms also mention preventing fraud on your accounts and internal analysis to improve the service (art. 4.1).

Who it shares them with

With BuddyBudget, because you asked it to, and with no other third party (art. 4.3). Like any regulated institution, it must hand them over to the authorities when the law requires it.

For how long

As long as the service needs them, and longer when a legal obligation, a dispute or fraud prevention requires it. Periods vary by type of data and GoCardless doesn't publish a number of years.

Where

GoCardless SAS is based in Paris. Some of its suppliers are outside the EU, including in the United States, under contracts that require them to treat data as European law demands.

If you disconnect the bank

We revoke the consent and GoCardless stops reading your accounts. What it has already received follows its own retention periods: to see it or ask for it to be deleted, you can write to GoCardless (GDPR, arts. 15-17).

A summary of GoCardless's EU terms and its privacy notice, where you'll find the contacts to exercise your rights.

AI is off until you say yes. Calculations, rules, bank sync and alerts never use it.

When

Only in four places: category suggestions, «Ask the AI» in Search for a sentence the rules cannot read, importing a bank statement in a new format, and importing investments when the normal reader fails.

What it receives

For categories, the cleaned counterparty name, including personal names, for every transaction type, your categories and your instructions: without amounts, dates, IBANs or notes. In Search, only the sentence you typed, today's date and the language. For an import, the whole file, because it has to work out its layout.

Where it goes

To OpenRouter in zero data retention mode: it passes the request only to model providers that keep nothing after the answer and don't train on it. If none does, the request doesn't go out. The condition is written into every request and also turned on in BuddyBudget's OpenRouter account, for all models.

What it decides

Your rules come first. With the option on, suggestions it is at least 70% sure of apply by themselves, marked as set by the app and one tap to change; the others wait for you. With the option off, no suggestion applies without you.

The limit

Zero data retention is an OpenRouter rule for model providers, not a contract we signed with them. OpenRouter keeps technical usage data (model, amount of text, cost); we keep the result (the category, the file's reading rules, for 24 hours the form suggested in Search) and technical logs without the content for 30 days.

How to turn it off

Withdraw your consent in Settings at any time: from then on no request goes out. If you host BuddyBudget yourself you can leave AI out entirely: the app works the same.

Details in the privacy policy.

We use statistics to learn which features get used and where people get stuck. They are not for getting to know you.

What we count

Pages viewed and actions such as “account created” or “file imported”, with details only as categories or counts (for example, how many accounts you've connected).

What it never receives

Amounts, transaction descriptions, merchant names, emails, names or account numbers. The list of events is closed in the code: a new event has to be added there on purpose.

Where

Umami, installed on our own servers. It uses no cookies, doesn't follow you to other sites and doesn't pass data to third parties.

How to turn them off

In the app, under Settings → Privacy, on each device.

All the details are on the cookie page.