Capture bank SMS on Android
Your bank already tells you every time you spend. This feature reads those messages and turns them into transactions, so your ledger stays current without you doing anything.
Android only. Requires Pro. iPhone does not allow apps to read SMS, which is why the iPhone equivalent is Apple Pay through a Shortcut.
Setting it up
- Settings, then Automations, then the SMS setup.
- Grant the SMS permission when Android asks.
- Choose which senders are read. This is the important step: you build a whitelist of the senders your bank uses. Anything not on that list is never processed.
- Optionally configure account routing so each card lands in the right account.
What happens when a message arrives
The message text is sent for extraction, the amount, merchant and date come back, the transaction is saved, and your phone shows a notification with the result:
$25.000 COP · 🍔 Food · 🏦 Nequi
That last part is the account it landed in. When it says Principal, the app could not work out which account it came from, and that is your cue to add a routing rule.
This works with the app in the foreground, in the background, and fully closed. Android wakes the app up to process the message.
One source at a time
SMS, Google Pay notifications and Apple Pay cannot all be active at once. You pick one active capture source, and switching to another turns the previous one off.
The reason is duplicates: a single purchase can produce both a bank SMS and a wallet notification, and two sources active at once would record it twice.
What it does not do
- It does not read messages from senders you did not whitelist.
- It does not consume your daily AI allowance. SMS extraction runs on its own budget.
- It does not work without internet, because the extraction happens on our server, not on the phone.
- It does not work if your subscription lapses. Capture stops, and comes back when Pro does.
Troubleshooting
Nothing is being captured. Check, in this order: Pro is active, the SMS permission is granted, the SMS source is the active one, and the sender of that message is on your whitelist.
It captures but everything lands in Principal. That is routing, not capture. See how the account is chosen, and map the last four digits of your card or a keyword like your wallet's name.
Some messages are captured and others are not. Banks change their message formats. Send us an example, with the amounts blanked out, at servicios@cuentate.com.
It stopped working after a few days. Some Android manufacturers aggressively freeze background apps. Excluding AI Money from battery optimisation on your phone brand's settings usually fixes it.
Privacy
Only messages from the senders you whitelisted are read, and only their text is sent for extraction. Everything else in your inbox is untouched. Details in Where your data lives.