Capture Apple Pay purchases on iPhone
iOS does not let an app read your text messages or other apps' notifications. The way in is Apple's own automation system: a Shortcut that runs every time you pay with Apple Pay and hands the purchase to AI Money.
iPhone only. Requires Pro.
Setting it up
- Settings, then Automations, then Apple Pay.
- Install the Shortcut from the link on that screen. It is called Save Transaction to AI Money.
- Create the Wallet automation: in the Shortcuts app, under Automation, create a Transaction automation for the card you use, and have it run the shortcut. Set it to run immediately, without asking.
- Optionally set a default account and card rules on the same setup screen.
Pay for a coffee, and the purchase should appear.
If you installed the Shortcut a while ago
The Shortcut was updated. If yours is from before that update, amounts arrive as zero and nothing gets recorded. Reinstalling it from the setup screen fixes it, and there is no in-app warning telling you this, so if capture suddenly stopped working, start here.
What the Shortcut sends
The amount, the merchant, and the name of the card in Wallet.
- The amount is the only required field. Without it there is nothing to record and the purchase is discarded.
- The merchant is optional. Wallet leaves it empty for some payments, and rejecting those would throw away real purchases. When it is missing, the transaction is titled Apple Pay.
Which account it lands in
The card field usually carries the name your card has in Wallet, like SIGNATURE AVIANCA, not the bank and last four digits. So the rule that catches it is normally a keyword rule on that name, not a digits rule.
You do not have to guess the name. The setup screen lists the cards it has seen on recent payments, and you assign an account to each one with a single tap. The app also learns: when a card name arrives with no digits to learn from, it saves that name as a rule by itself, without ever overwriting a rule you wrote.
Full cascade in how the account is chosen.
Honest limitations
- This is not true background capture. It depends on Shortcuts and the Wallet automation firing. If iOS decides not to run the automation, nothing arrives.
- The automation fires whether or not you are Pro, but capture only completes with Pro active.
- If you turn Apple Pay capture on, SMS and Google Pay capture cannot also be active. One source at a time.
Troubleshooting
Purchases stopped being recorded. Reinstall the Shortcut first, that is the most common cause. Then check that the Wallet automation is set to run without asking.
Everything lands in Principal. Open the setup screen, find your card in the list of seen cards, and assign it an account.
It records some cards and not others. Each card in Wallet needs its own automation, or one automation covering all cards. Check the Shortcuts app.