How Superfin reads your transactions

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 #4412 becomes "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.

This work happens on Superfin's servers, not on your phone. We use AI providers for some of it: Anthropic helps clean up merchant names, and OpenAI powers the assistant that answers your questions. Each one gets only the data needed for its task, and never your bank login. Our Privacy Policy lists what each provider receives.

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.