Last updated: 2026-08-16.
SwipeWise tells you which of your credit cards to use where. It works without an account, and unless you choose otherwise, nothing about you leaves your phone. There is no advertising, no usage analytics, and nothing is sold or shared for marketing. The only thing sent automatically is a crash report when the app fails.
Your cards and anything you add about them (nickname, last four digits, credit limit, statement due day), your transactions if you connect a bank, and a random id the app generates so its own database has something to file your wallet under. That id is not an account and is never sent anywhere. Uninstalling the app deletes all of it.
Signing in is optional and creates an account, nothing more. We then hold:
Signing out does not delete any of this, so that changing phones does not cost you your wallet. Deleting is a separate step — see Deleting your data.
When you open the Stores tab, or leave the area your store alerts were set up in, the app takes a single location reading. Before anything is sent it is rounded to about 110 metres; the precise reading never leaves your phone. The rounded position goes to our lookup service, which passes it to the Google Places API and returns the shops near you. It is not stored or logged.
Two things are saved on your phone. One rounded position — where your alerts were last set up — so the app can tell when you have left that area; it is overwritten each time alerts refresh. And the lists of shops returned for areas you have looked in, kept so the app does not ask for the same area twice; that cache holds at most 200 areas and drops anything older than a week. Neither leaves your phone, and both go when you uninstall. We keep no record of where you have been.
If you turn arrival alerts on, the app also re-checks about twice a day that they are still registered, because Android can drop them silently. That check usually uses what it already has; if it needs fresh results it makes the same rounded lookup described above. It is the only thing SwipeWise does on a schedule.
"While using the app" is enough for the Stores list. "Allow all the time" is needed only if you want a notification when you arrive somewhere; Android performs that detection itself and wakes SwipeWise only on arrival.
This is a paid feature. The subscription is not on sale yet, so it is currently available only to accounts granted access individually. If that is not you, this section does not apply.
If you connect a bank, what you enter reaches our bank-data provider through our own service, which signs the request on your behalf and does not store or log it. The provider returns your cards, balances and transactions, which are saved only on your phone. What the provider itself keeps is governed by its own privacy policy.
Your bank is contacted only when you ask — when you link it, or when you pull to refresh. Your accounts are never synced on a schedule or in the background.
When the app crashes, a report goes to Firebase Crashlytics so the fault can be fixed. It contains the error, your device model, Android version, app version and a few diagnostic numbers. It does not contain your wallet, transactions, location or email. Reports are tied to an anonymous installation id that we cannot trace back to a person, and they expire on Google's schedule, typically within 90 days.
The app also downloads a public list of credit cards and their rewards. That request says nothing about you.
| Permission | Why | Needed? |
|---|---|---|
| Location (precise and approximate) | Find shops near you | Only for nearby stores |
| Location in the background | Notify you when you arrive at a shop | Optional |
| Physical activity | Tell a real visit from driving past, so you are not pinged at a red light | Optional |
| Notifications | Arrival alerts and card reminders | Optional |
| Run at startup | Restore your store alerts after a reboot | Needed for alerts to survive restarting your phone |
| Exact alarms, ignore battery optimisation | Deliver an alert shortly after you arrive, rather than whenever Android gets round to it | Optional |
| Foreground service | Finish a task you started if you switch away mid-way | Required |
| Internet | Nearby search, the card list, and your bank if you connect one | Required |
You can withdraw any of these in Android Settings at any time. The app carries on without them — denying background location keeps the Stores tab working and simply stops arrival notifications.
In the app: Profile → Delete my account. This removes your account, your backup, any bank connection and the data on your phone. It is immediate and permanent.
If you no longer have the app: email jacobceles@gmail.com from the address you signed in with. Requests are completed within 30 days.
Switching backup off stops further uploads but keeps the copy already stored, so you can still restore it; deleting your account is what erases it. Crash reports cannot be traced to you and expire on their own. Two things belong to the phone rather than to your account and so are not cleared from it by deleting the account: your muted stores — the backed-up copy is erased, the one on the device is kept — and the cached lists of nearby shops, which never left your phone. Uninstalling removes both. Full details are on the account deletion page.
Everything the app sends travels over an encrypted connection, and every request to our own services is authenticated as you, so an account can only ever reach its own data.
SwipeWise is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data.
If this policy changes materially, the updated version is posted here with a new date, and the app links to this page rather than carrying its own copy.
jacobceles@gmail.com, or open an issue at github.com/jacobceles/swipewise.