Short version: Kharcha reads your bank SMS on your phone and that's where it stays. There's no server or account for your spending data, ever. The app shows ads to stay free, and that's the only reason it connects to the internet at all.
Kharcha is an Android app that reads incoming bank and UPI SMS messages and turns them into a categorized record of your spending. This policy explains exactly what the app has access to, what it does with it, and, just as importantly, what it doesn't do.
The short answer is that Kharcha was built to collect as little as possible. It doesn't ask who you are and it doesn't ask for your bank login. Your SMS content and the spending record built from it are processed and stored only on your device. The app does use an internet connection, but only to request and show the ads that keep it free, a separate function that never has access to your messages or transaction data.
To do its job, Kharcha reads the text of SMS messages that arrive on your device, along with your inbox of existing SMS, so it can catch transaction messages you received before installing the app. It looks specifically for messages from known bank, card and UPI sender IDs.
Messages that aren't transaction SMS, things like OTPs, account statements, due date reminders, autopay confirmations or promotional texts, are read in order to be recognized and then ignored. They are not stored or categorized.
Everything above is processed on your phone, inside the app, and stored in a local database on your device. That data is used only to build the spending history, category totals and account balances you see inside the app itself.
None of it is uploaded anywhere. There's no account to create, no login, and no cloud backup of your transaction data run by us. If you use Android's own device backup, that's Google's system working at the operating system level, independent of anything Kharcha does.
In plain terms: the advertising in the app and your financial data are kept apart by design. The part of the app that talks to the internet to request ads is separate from the part that reads, parses and stores your SMS and spending history, and the two don't share information.
Android requires apps to declare every permission they use. Here's what Kharcha asks for and why.
Kharcha does not request contacts, location, camera, microphone, storage beyond its own app data, or any permission unrelated to reading SMS and showing ads.
All parsed transactions, categories and account balances are stored in a local database inside the app's private storage on your device. Uninstalling the app, or clearing its data from Android's app settings, permanently deletes this information. There is no remote copy to delete separately, because none exists.
Kharcha shows ads through a third-party advertising service to stay free. That service may collect limited technical information, such as an advertising identifier, device type and general ad performance data, in order to select and measure ads. It operates as a separate component within the app and is never given access to your SMS content, parsed transactions, categories or account balances. Beyond what's needed to run ads, Kharcha has no backend service and does not use a separate analytics or crash-reporting SDK.
Kharcha is a general-purpose finance utility and isn't directed at children. It doesn't knowingly collect personal information from anyone, which by design includes children, since it doesn't collect or transmit personal information from any user at all.
If this policy changes, the update will be posted on this page with a new "last updated" date above. Since the app doesn't collect contact information from you, we won't be able to notify you directly, so it's worth checking back if you want to stay current.
Questions about this policy or how Kharcha handles data can be sent directly by email.