Effective date: 6 October 2026
UseWise is published by Nkundimana Joel Gakwaya, an individual developer trading as LectureMee Labs ("we"). The developer is also a lecturer at Asia-Pacific International University, Muak Lek, Saraburi, Thailand. UseWise is an independent personal project and is not owned, operated or endorsed by the university. Contact for any privacy request: [email protected]. Based in Muak Lek, Thailand.
UseWise is offline-first. Your money records are stored on your phone in an encrypted database. They leave your phone only if you create an account and turn on sync. We do not run ads, we do not use analytics or crash-reporting services, and we do not sell your data.
Always on your phone (never sent to us unless you turn on sync): the money information you enter: pockets, places, categories, income sources, transactions with amounts, dates and optional notes, goals, internal loans, allocation plans, household members' names and roles. We use it only to run the app.
If you create an account and turn on sync:
Ask UW.ai (assistant): you can chat with the assistant about your money and about using the app. Your questions are answered entirely on your phone, using your own records (balances, spending, pockets, shopping lists and recent entries) that are already stored there. They are not sent to our server or to any AI service in this release. The conversation is kept only on the screen and is cleared when you leave it. The assistant never changes your money without you tapping Approve.
Notifications: reminders are generated on your phone. We do not collect a push token and send no remote notifications.
Currency converter: when you open the converter screen, your phone asks a public exchange-rate service (open.er-api.com, operated by ExchangeRate-API) for the day's rates. That service can see your phone's IP address and standard request details. We send it no amounts, no names and none of your records, and nothing you type in the converter leaves your phone. The downloaded rates are kept on your phone for a few hours.
Receipt reading: if you tap "Scan a receipt", you take a photo or pick a picture from your gallery, and the app reads its text on your phone (using Google ML Kit's on-device text recognition, which works without internet). The picture is not saved by the app and is never sent anywhere. Only the total, date and names you confirm are saved, as an expense on your phone.
Camera and product lookup: the app asks for camera permission only when you tap a scan button (joining a household by QR code, reading a PromptPay QR code to fill in an expense, or scanning a product barcode for a shopping list). The camera image is processed on your phone and is never recorded, saved or sent anywhere. When you scan a product barcode, your phone asks Open Food Facts (world.openfoodfacts.org, a public product database) for that product. Only the barcode number is sent, together with what any web request shows, such as your phone's IP address. We send no names, lists or amounts. The product name and category you confirm are saved on your phone with your shopping lists.
Read to me: the speaker button reads a screen aloud using the text-to-speech voice built into your Android phone. The words are spoken by your phone's own speech service, which is set up by you and your phone maker (for example Google); we do not send the text anywhere. The speaker button is hidden on screens that show amounts while your amounts are hidden, so nothing private is read aloud.
Easy mode, "My usual" items and "Check my money": these work entirely on your phone. Easy mode only changes how the app looks. The usual items you save (a name and an amount) and the results of the daily money check stay on your phone and are not sent to us, unless they form part of the records you sync.
Permissions: the app uses internet access, vibration, and fingerprint/face unlock. Biometric checks are done by Android; the app only learns "yes" or "no" and your biometric data never leaves the OS.
Only us, through service providers that process data on our behalf: Hostinger International Ltd. (server hosting; data centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia); Cloudflare (network proxy and TLS for usewise.lecturemee.com); and Resend (e-mail delivery for password reset). Separately, if you use the currency converter, the exchange-rate service named in section 3 receives your phone's IP address when it fetches the rates, and if you scan a product barcode, Open Food Facts receives the barcode and your phone's IP address. We do not share data with advertisers or data brokers. If you invite household members, they receive the shared records their role permits.
Encrypted database on your phone (key in the Android Keystore-backed secure store); HTTPS only to our server; passwords hashed with Argon2id; short-lived sign-in tokens; rate limiting; access to each household's records restricted by database row-level security. No system is perfectly secure.
Depending on where you live (for example under Thailand's PDPA or the GDPR) you may request access, correction, export, restriction or deletion, and may withdraw consent by turning off sync. Write to [email protected]. You may also complain to your data-protection authority.
UseWise is intended for adults (18 and over). Parents may keep family members' profiles inside a household they manage. We do not knowingly allow anyone under 18 to create an account.
Your information may be processed or transferred through service providers located in different countries. Our application data is stored on servers located in Malaysia. We use Cloudflare for certain network and security services and Resend for transactional email delivery, which may involve processing or transferring information outside Malaysia. We rely on the applicable contractual, security, and privacy safeguards provided by these service providers. We may update this section as our service providers and data-processing arrangements change.
We will post changes here and in the app and update the effective date.