Privacy Policy

1. Your privacy matters

Yala is your personal finance app. Your financial information belongs to you. Here we tell you, with no fine print, what data leaves your phone, where it goes, who can see it and how long it is kept.

2. Where your data lives

When you start, you choose where Yala keeps your personal data. You can change it later from your Profile.

• ● Your private iCloud: your data lives on your device and syncs through your iCloud. You don't need to create a Yala account.
• ● Your cloud account: you sign in with Apple or Google and your data is stored on Yala's servers, so you can use it from any device. Groups also needs you to sign in, even if your personal data stays in your iCloud.
• ● No bank connection: Yala doesn't connect to your bank or ask for your banking credentials, in either mode.

3. If you choose your private iCloud

Your data is stored on your device and syncs across your Apple devices using iCloud's private database, run by Apple. We can't read it. If iCloud is off, everything stays on your device. Even in this mode, some features send data off your phone when you use them: Groups (section 5), Yala AI and exchange rates (section 6) and our own analytics (section 7).

4. If you choose your cloud account

The cloud account is optional and free. If you turn it on: • What gets uploaded: all your Yala data: accounts (with their name and, if you entered it, their number), transactions with their notes, categories, tags, budgets, scheduled payments, cash flow, Inbox drafts (with the original text you shared) and your app preferences. • What doesn't: your receipt photos. They stay only on the device where you saved them. • Where: on Yala's servers, which use Supabase as their database in the us-east-1 region (United States). • Who can see it: you and our team, who can see it to give you support and smart features. We don't use end-to-end encryption. • Sign-in: with your Apple or Google account. We receive your email and the basic profile details Apple or Google include when you sign in. There is no Yala password and no email recovery: if you lose access to that Apple or Google account, you lose access to your cloud data, so it's worth exporting it first. • Your device: when you turn the account on, Yala sends this device's identifier for the app (IDFV), used to coordinate the move to the cloud across your devices. • Going back to private mode: you can go back to your iCloud whenever you like, without losing anything. The copy on our servers stays stored, no longer updated, until you delete your account (section 12).

5. Groups and shared expenses

To use Groups you sign in with Apple or Google, even if your personal data stays in your iCloud. Groups live on Yala's servers so all members see the same expenses, up to date. • What's stored: the group's name, icon and currency, each member's alias, expenses with their amount, description, date, category and note, how each expense is split, and settlements. • How it's protected: the group name, aliases, amounts, descriptions and notes are stored encrypted with a key held by our server. It isn't end-to-end encryption: our server can decrypt them so the group works. • Who sees it: the group's members. Your email isn't shared with the group, and neither are your finances outside it. • Invitations: an invite link carries the group's name, icon and color, the aliases of up to five members and the inviter's, to show a preview. Anyone with the link sees that data and can join while it's valid (7 days). • Notifications: while you're signed in, we store your device's notification token to tell you about changes in your groups. Apple delivers the notification, and it carries no amounts or names. • When you leave a group you stop seeing it, but the expenses you added stay in the group for the others. If you used Groups in earlier versions of Yala, those older groups were shared through iCloud, using Apple's CloudKit Sharing.

6. Yala AI, voice, photos and exchange rates

The artificial intelligence (AI) features are optional. The first time, we ask for your permission and explain what gets sent, and you can withdraw it in Profile → "AI Privacy & Data". What they send goes first through our server (hosted on Cloudflare), which forwards it to OpenAI, our AI provider: • Yala AI (chat): your question, that day's earlier questions and answers, and a summary of your finances over the last 13 months: balances and names of your accounts, totals by category, frequent merchants (taken from your notes), tags, budgets and recurring payments, and some sample transactions from your main categories (date, amount, merchant and account), plus your device's language and country. • Insights and summaries: totals and trends by category, budgets and recurring payments. • Voice: your audio recording, along with the names of your merchants and subcategories so the transcription recognizes them. Then the transcribed text, your subcategories and your accounts' currencies, to turn it into a transaction. • Photos and screenshots: the image you choose, recompressed (and resized if it's large) and stripped of its metadata, such as GPS location, date or camera model, before it's sent. • Bank emails (if you turn them on, with the cloud account): the alerts from your bank that you forward to your Yala address (auto+…@yala-app.pe) reach our server, which sends their text to OpenAI to pull out the transaction: amount, currency, merchant, date, bank and the last 4 digits of the card or account. We don't keep the email, its subject or its sender: only that transaction, until your app picks it up for your Inbox or for 30 days at most. From the email Gmail uses to confirm the forwarding address, we keep only the code, to show it to you in the app. Only forward your bank's alerts: what you forward is what gets read. OpenAI processes this data to generate the answer and, under OpenAI's API policy, does not use this data to train its models. Our server doesn't keep the content of your requests: it only logs technical data for each call (task type, model, duration, size and result), which doesn't go into any of our databases, and keeps a per-device usage counter to apply the daily limits. You can use Yala without turning on any AI feature. For exchange rates, the app asks our server, which gets them from exchangerate.host. Only currency codes (for example, USD or PEN) and dates are sent, never your amounts.

7. Our own analytics

To know how many people use Yala and whether its critical features work, the app sends minimal technical signals to our server (Cloudflare Workers Analytics Engine). We don't use any third-party analytics SDK. • Only three kinds of signal are sent: a daily ping (to count daily active users), the sign-up when you finish the initial setup or turn on the cloud account, and technical notices about sync, migration, Groups and account deletion. Never the content of your data: no amounts, names, notes or categories. • Each send carries the app version and an installation identifier: a hash of a random value created on your phone. It isn't linked to your account or your email, and it's there so the same phone isn't counted twice. • These signals are kept for 90 days. • They're sent whenever the app is online: there's currently no setting to turn them off. • They aren't shared with third parties or used for advertising.

8. Identifiers

Yala doesn't use your device's advertising identifier (IDFA) and doesn't track you across other companies' apps or websites. It does use these identifiers, each for one thing only: • App Attest key: a key your iPhone generates with an Apple service to prove requests come from the genuine Yala app. It goes with every call to Yala AI, exchange rates, sync and Groups. Our server keeps its public part and, if you bought Pro, the product, its expiry and the purchase identifier. • This device's identifier for the app (IDFV): only when you turn on the cloud account (section 4). • Notification token: while you're signed in, for Groups notifications (section 5). • Installation identifier: the one used by our own analytics (section 7). • Your account identifier: created by our sign-in provider when you sign in with Apple or Google. If you buy Pro while signed in, Apple includes it in the purchase so your subscription is tied to your account. • Sync identifier: a random number per device that travels with each synced change, to order changes across devices.

9. Providers that process data for us

To run Yala we use these providers. Each one gets only what it needs for its part: • Supabase: database and sign-in for the cloud account and Groups, in the us-east-1 region (United States). • Cloudflare: hosts our server, which acts as the bridge for AI, exchange rates, sync and Groups, and stores our own analytics. It also receives the emails you forward to your Yala address. • OpenAI: processes what you send to the AI features (section 6). • Apple: iCloud and CloudKit in private mode, App Attest, notifications, Sign in with Apple, App Store purchases and the update check. • Google: Sign in with Google, if you choose it. • exchangerate.host: exchange rates. It only receives currency codes and dates, from our server; none of your data. • Vercel: hosts this website (yala-app.pe), including the group invite pages. Some of these providers process data outside your country, for example in the United States.

10. What we DON'T do

• ● We don't sell your data or give it to third parties for their own purposes
• ● We don't show ads
• ● We don't use third-party analytics, advertising or crash-reporting SDKs
• ● We don't use the advertising identifier (IDFA) or track you across other companies' apps and websites

11. How long we keep your data

• Cloud account: for as long as you have the account, including if you go back to private mode. When you delete it, your personal data is erased right away, with no grace period (section 12). • Backups: our database provider makes a daily backup of the cloud account and Groups, and each backup is kept for up to 7 days. What you delete may remain in those backups until they expire. • Groups: what you added to a group stays in it. In groups with other members, under "Deleted user", so the others' balances still add up; groups where you were the only member are marked as deleted on our server. • Sign-in logs: our sign-in provider keeps technical access logs, with your email and IP address, that aren't erased when you delete the account. That provider sets how long they're kept. • Our own analytics: 90 days. • Group invitations: the link expires after 7 days. • Technical device data: the public part of the App Attest key, your subscription details and the AI usage counter are kept on our server with no set period. They belong to your device, not to your account: they stay even if you delete your account, because the phone keeps using them and that counter is what limits the free AI trials. Deleting your account does delete the subscription linked to it and its usage counter. • Content you send to the AI: our server doesn't keep it. • Bank emails: the transaction read from each alert, until the app picks it up or 30 days; your forwarding address, the trial email counter and a fingerprint of each alert (so it isn't read twice, without its content), while you have the account. They're deleted when you delete the account.

12. Your data, your control

• View and correct: all your data is visible in the app and you can edit it whenever you like. • Export: in Profile → "Export Data", as CSV or Excel, for any period or your whole history. It's free, without Pro too. • Wipe your data: "Wipe my data" deletes your accounts, transactions and budgets and keeps your account and your groups. With a cloud account they're also deleted from it; on our server they stay stored, marked as deleted, until you delete the account. • Delete your account: in Profile → "Your Yala account" → "Delete my account". It erases your account and your personal data from our servers, removes you from your groups, deletes your notification tokens and tries to revoke Yala's access to your Apple or Google account. It's permanent. What you added to groups isn't erased (section 11). • Deleting the app isn't enough: uninstalling Yala erases your data on your phone, but not the data on our servers or in your iCloud. To erase the server data, delete your account first. • iCloud: you manage the data in your private iCloud from your device's iCloud settings. • AI: you can withdraw your AI permissions in Profile → "AI Privacy & Data". For any other request about your data (access, correction or deletion), write to us at [email protected].

13. Changes to this policy

If we update this policy, we'll publish the changes on this page.

14. Contact

Got questions? Write to us at: [email protected]