How Superfin reads your transactions
A look under the hood — read-only access, on-device sense-making, and why we never touch your money.
When you connect an account to a money app, it's fair to ask exactly what it can do. Here's a plain-English look at how Superfin works — and, just as importantly, what it can't do.
Read-only, always
Superfin connects to your bank through a regulated data provider using read-only access. That means it can see your transactions, but it cannot move money, initiate payments, or change anything about your account. There is no "transfer" button we could press even if we wanted to — the permission simply isn't granted.
Read-only isn't a policy we promise to follow. It's the level of access the connection is created with, so moving your money isn't something Superfin is capable of doing.
Making sense of the mess
Raw bank data is messy: cryptic merchant names, inconsistent categories, duplicate-looking charges. Superfin's job is to turn that into something legible:
- Normalizing merchants —
SQ *BLUE BOTTLE #4412becomes "Blue Bottle Coffee." - Categorizing spend — grouping charges so you can see where the money actually goes.
- Detecting patterns — recognizing which charges recur, so subscriptions surface on their own.
- Computing the honest numbers — safe-to-spend, monthly income, category trends.
Your data, your call
We collect what's needed to answer your questions and nothing we don't use. You can disconnect an account at any time, and you're never the product being sold — the subscription is the business model, precisely so your data doesn't have to be.
Transparency isn't a marketing line for a money app. It's the entire foundation of trust, and we'd rather over-explain than leave you guessing.