Why PaySmart exists
I built PaySmart because I was carrying balances on several cards and could not get a straight answer to a simple question: where do I actually stand this month?
The apps that were supposed to answer it wanted a bank login before they'd show me anything, then answered with a credit card recommendation. Mint at least tried, and then it shut down and took everyone's data with it. What I wanted was a list of my cards, what's owed, what's due, and what my utilization looks like before I apply for anything. Not a feed. Not an offer. A list.
So I wrote it for myself, and it turned out a lot of people wanted the same boring thing.
How it's paid for
This is the part most finance apps are vague about, so here it is plainly: PaySmart is funded by the people who pay $9.99 a year for Pro. That is the entire business model. There is no second revenue stream, and that's deliberate — a second revenue stream in this category almost always turns out to be you.
It also explains the price. There's no cloud infrastructure to fund, because your data never leaves your phone — no servers, no database of financial records, no security team guarding one. $9.99 a year covers one developer building and supporting an iOS app. It isn't an introductory rate waiting to climb.
What I won't do
- Sell or share your information. There's nothing to sell — it's on your phone, not mine.
- Put ads or credit card offers in the app, at any tier.
- Require a bank connection to unlock features that should just work.
- Make you create an account to use software you already downloaded.
- Quietly change any of the above and hope you don't read the update notes.
The Privacy Policy spells out the details, including what the website itself collects — which is not zero, and I'd rather say so than pretend otherwise.
What happens if I stop
Fair question to ask a one-person app, especially if you got burned by Mint.
Because your data lives on your iPhone rather than my server, there's no switch I can flip that takes it away from you. An installed copy keeps working and keeps your information. That's not a promise about my intentions — it's just how the app is built, and it's the main reason I built it that way.
Say hello
I read every email that comes in, and I answer them myself — usually within two business days. Bug reports, feature requests, and "why does it do this instead of that" are all welcome.
Thanks for reading this far. If PaySmart saves you one late fee, it's paid for itself several times over — and if it doesn't fit how you manage your money, the free tier costs you nothing to find out.
— Daniel Jetzer
Independent developer · Spring, Texas