Last updated: 8 August 2026
Data controller: NIKSHA Technologies ("NIKSY", "we", "us").
The short version
Your money data stays on your phone.
NIKSY records and organises your spending. Your transactions, your notes, your conversations with the assistant and your reports are all held and processed on your device. We do not receive them and we do not have a copy.
What we hold is small, and section 2 lists it exhaustively.
1. What stays on your device
We never receive any of this:
- Every transaction — amount, date, merchant, category, note
- Your budgets, goals, habits, tasks and reminders
- Everything you type or say to the assistant, and everything it replies
- Payment notifications and bank SMS NIKSY reads, and everything extracted
- Your reports, insights and spending history
- Your categorisation preferences and corrections
- Your acceptance of this policy — recorded on your device, not on our servers
NIKSY's database, categorisation, reporting and assistant all run on your device. There is no server that receives your transactions, and no server endpoint that accepts a message you type to the assistant.
2. What we receive, and why
Exhaustively:
- Your mobile number — to sign you in. There is no password.
- A one-time code, stored as a hash, to verify you hold that number.
- Session tokens and device registrations — to keep you signed in and let you revoke other devices.
- A backup wrapping key — one random key per account, which protects your backup. It cannot decrypt anything on its own. See section 10.
- Crash reports — technical only: device model, OS version, app version, stack trace.
- Usage events — which capabilities are used and whether they worked, and which screens are opened. Never anything you typed or spoke, and never an amount, merchant or item name.
- Server request logs — for operating the service and preventing abuse. Where a phone number appears it is masked to its last two digits.
Crash and usage data are handled by Google Firebase. Their identifiers are pseudonymous, not anonymous — they hold no name or number, but they are identifiers, and we would rather say so than call them anonymous.
We do not use an advertising identifier; the permissions that would allow one were deliberately removed from the app before release. We do not collect push notification tokens. There is no advertising in NIKSY, and we do not sell your data or share it for advertising.
2a. Older records on our servers
NIKSY did not always work this way. Earlier versions stored transactions, budgets, goals, habits and tasks on our servers.
If your account was created before that change, those older records are still on our servers. Nothing new is added to them — the parts of the server that could write them are switched off. They exist so the app can move your history onto your device, you can export them at any time, and they are deleted when you delete your account.
If your account was created after that change, we hold none of this.
3. Bank SMS
If you allow it, NIKSY reads bank transaction alerts to record your spending.
The sender is checked before anything is read. Indian banks send transactional SMS from a registered header such as VK-HDFCBK, never from a phone number. NIKSY checks the sender's shape first, so a message from a person is discarded without being opened — its content never enters the app.
For a bank message, NIKSY keeps the amount, the merchant, a payment reference and the last four digits of the account.
What happens to the message text itself. It is not saved into your ledger — there is no field in the database that can hold it. There is one exception, and it is honest to state it: if a bank alert arrives while NIKSY is not running, the message is held briefly in the app's private storage so it is not lost, and is read and removed the next time you open the app. At most fifty are held at a time, and nothing in that queue leaves your device.
None of this leaves your device. We ask only to *receive* new alerts; we deliberately do not ask for permission to read your message history.
You can decline, or turn it off later in your phone's settings. NIKSY still records payments from app notifications, voice, typing and statement import.
4. Notification access
If you grant notification access, NIKSY reads the notifications your phone shows so it can spot payment alerts. We want to be precise about this, because it is broader than a list of banks.
- Messaging, social and email apps are blocked — before their text reaches NIKSY at all. That includes WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Slack, LinkedIn, X, Gmail, Outlook and every standard SMS app. NIKSY does not read your personal messages.
- Notifications from other apps are read — not only from banks and payment apps. A notification from a shopping, delivery, travel or other non-messaging app is examined for payment information.
- What NIKSY keeps is the same short list: an amount, a merchant, a reference, a time and the app it came from. The notification text is not saved into your ledger.
- An app NIKSY does not recognise can never create an entry on its own. If something looks like a payment but the source is unfamiliar, NIKSY asks you first.
- As with SMS, a notification arriving while NIKSY is not running is held briefly in the app's private storage and cleared once read.
All of this happens on your device. You can turn it off at any time in your phone's settings.
5. Microphone
Used only while you are actively speaking to the assistant.
NIKSY never receives, records or stores your audio. The microphone is handed to your device's own speech-recognition service, which returns text.
Depending on your device, its settings and your language, that speech service (usually Google's, built into Android) may process the audio in the cloud rather than on the device. That processing is governed by your device provider's privacy policy, not ours. You can avoid it entirely by typing instead of speaking, or by revoking the microphone permission.
The text it returns is handled on your device like anything you type. Because the assistant runs locally, it is not sent to our servers.
6. Statement import — what is kept and what is discarded
If you import a statement, the file is read on your device to extract transactions. It is not uploaded, and the statement file is not retained after import.
Bank narrations routinely embed identifiers that NIKSY has no use for, so descriptions are scrubbed before anything is saved. These are never stored:
- Full account number
- IFSC code
- UTR / transaction reference
- Cheque number
- Branch code
- Card number (only the last four digits are kept, to tell your cards apart)
7. Scanned statements
NIKSY reads text-based PDFs. It cannot read a scanned or photographed statement — there is no optical character recognition in the app — and it will tell you and refuse the import rather than guess.
8. Offline and on-device processing
NIKSY is built to work offline, because that is what running on your device means:
- On your device: the ledger, categorisation, reports, statement parsing, sensitive-field scrubbing, duplicate detection, and the whole assistant.
- On your device's speech service: voice input. NIKSY receives only the resulting text — see section 5 for where the audio may be processed.
- On our servers: only what section 2 lists — sign-in, sessions, subscription verification and diagnostics. Never your financial data.
9. Artificial intelligence
No third party processes your data with AI.
NIKSY's assistant is a deterministic engine that runs on your device. It uses rules and curated language data, not a large language model, and production builds ship with external AI providers disabled entirely. Nothing you say to NIKSY is sent to an AI service — ours or anyone else's — for any purpose, including model training.
10. Backup
Backup is optional and off until you turn it on.
When enabled, NIKSY encrypts your data on your phone and writes the encrypted result to a hidden, private folder in your own Google Drive. The permission we ask Google for gives access to that folder and to nothing else in your Drive.
How the key works, stated exactly
We deliberately do not call this "zero-knowledge" or "end-to-end encrypted", because those terms mean something specific and this design does not meet them.
Your backup is encrypted with a data key generated on your phone that is never transmitted anywhere. That data key is locked with a wrapping key, and the two halves are held by different parties on purpose:
- Google holds your encrypted backup and the locked data key — and no wrapping key, so Google cannot open it.
- NIKSY holds the wrapping key — and no backup and no locked key, so we cannot open it either.
- You hold both halves: ours needs a one-time code on your number, Google's needs your Google account.
The honest consequence: NIKSY and Google, acting together, could decrypt your backup. No single party can. We chose this so that replacing a lost phone does not require you to have written down a 44-character key months earlier — the previous design did, and it lost people's data.
What this means in practice:
- Restoring on a new phone needs only your number, a code, and the same Google account. There is no key to remember.
- One backup is kept; a new one replaces it.
- If you lose that Google account, or that phone number, we cannot recover the backup.
- If you delete your NIKSY account we delete the wrapping key, and any backup left in your Drive becomes permanently unreadable. Export first.
- Backup can fail. We do not guarantee one exists at any given moment.
Android's own automatic backup is switched off in NIKSY. Left on, it would have uploaded an unencrypted copy of your database to your Drive outside all of the above.
11. Security
- Your data sits in the app's private storage, which other apps cannot read, and is protected by your device's own encryption. NIKSY does not apply a second layer of encryption to it, so keeping a screen lock on your phone is meaningful protection — we recommend it.
- Authentication tokens are held in the device's secure storage (Keystore/Keychain), and one-time codes are stored only as hashes.
- Backups are encrypted on your device before upload — see section 10.
- Traffic to our servers uses TLS.
- The app requests the narrowest permissions its features need, and its permission set was audited and reduced before release.
No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise. If we become aware of a breach affecting you, we will notify you and the relevant authority without undue delay.
12. Third-party providers
We do not sell your personal data and we do not share it for advertising. We share only what section 2 lists, and only with:
- An SMS gateway in India (Fast2SMS or MSG91) — your mobile number and the one-time code, so it can be delivered.
- Google Firebase Crashlytics — crash diagnostics. No financial data.
- Google Firebase Analytics — usage events and screen names, plus Firebase's own identifiers. No financial data, and nothing you typed or spoke.
- Google Drive and Google Sign-In — your encrypted backup, in your own account. See section 10.
- Your device's speech service — your audio when you use voice. See section 5. This is not our provider; it is your device's.
- Our hosting provider, which runs the servers holding what section 2 lists.
Google's services process data on infrastructure outside India, so using crash reporting, analytics, backup or voice involves a transfer outside India.
We may also disclose information where we are legally required to. The practical limit is worth stating: for anything on your device, and for the contents of your backup, we do not hold it and cannot produce it.
13. Retention
- On-device data: until you delete it, or until you uninstall the app.
- Held capture queue (sections 3 and 4): until the next time you open the app.
- Your mobile number and account record: until you delete your account.
- Sessions and devices: until they expire, or you sign out or revoke them.
- Backup wrapping key: until you delete your account.
- Your backup in Google Drive: until it is replaced by a newer one, or you delete it.
- Imported statement files: discarded immediately after processing.
- Crash and usage data: retained by Google under Firebase's retention settings.
14. Deleting your account
You can delete your account in Profile → Delete account.
Deleted from our servers: your account record and phone number, all sessions and device registrations, your backup wrapping key, any backup stored on our servers, and any older server-side records described in section 2a.
Deleted from this phone, in the same step:
- every transaction, budget, goal, habit, task and pending capture
- everything you typed or said to the assistant, and everything it replied
- your learned categories and corrections
- the key that encrypts your backups
- any bank SMS or notification alert still held from before the app last opened
- your sign-in tokens and saved profile
Not deleted:
- Your backup in Google Drive. It is in your Google account, not ours, so we cannot reach it. Because we delete the wrapping key it becomes permanently unreadable, but the file remains until you remove it.
- Crash and usage data already sent to Firebase, which ages out under Google's retention settings.
- The NIKSY app itself. Uninstall it if you also want it off your phone.
If anything on this phone cannot be cleared, NIKSY tells you so and asks you to uninstall to finish — it does not claim success it did not achieve.
Deletion is permanent — we cannot restore a deleted account. You may register again with the same number, but it will be a new, empty account.
You may also request deletion by writing to niksy.app@gmail.com.
15. Your rights
You can:
- Access everything NIKSY holds — it is in the app
- Correct any transaction, at any time
- Delete individual transactions, or your whole account (see section 14)
- Export your data
- Withdraw consent for notification access, SMS or the microphone at any time, without losing access to the rest of NIKSY
- Complain to us at niksy.app@gmail.com. We aim to acknowledge within 72 hours and resolve within 30 days
Which law applies. Today, the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the SPDI Rules, 2011 govern how we handle your information; financial information is "sensitive personal data" under those Rules and we treat it accordingly. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and its 2025 Rules are commencing in phases, with most substantive obligations taking effect on 13 May 2027. We have written this policy to that standard ahead of the deadline. From that date you may also approach the Data Protection Board of India.
16. Children
NIKSY is not directed at children and is intended for users aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, contact us and we will delete it.
17. Changes
If this policy changes materially, you will be asked to review and accept the updated version. You can see which version you accepted, and when, at any time. That record lives on your device, so if you reinstall NIKSY you will be asked to accept again.
18. Not financial advice
NIKSY is a personal finance assistant. It does not provide financial, investment, tax, legal or accounting advice, and nothing it shows is a recommendation.
Its figures depend on the information available to it and may be incomplete — a payment it never saw is a payment it cannot count, and automatic capture can misread, duplicate or miscategorise. Always check your bank's own records before making a decision. You remain responsible for your financial decisions.