Track Apple Pay purchases automatically.
Pay in a shop — the expense records itself.

How automatic Apple Pay tracking works

No bank link and no extra app: Apple's Shortcuts does the work. When you pay with a Wallet card, an iOS automation runs the HonestExpenses shortcut, which sends the amount, the shop's name and the card's name to your account with a personal key. Setup takes a few minutes:

1. Open HonestExpenses on your iPhone, go to Settings → Apple Pay and tap Add the shortcut. Shortcuts opens — tap «Add Shortcut» and come back.
2. Tap Connect. The shortcut receives your personal key and asks iOS for its permissions; allow them.
3. Turn on the automation: open the shortcut, tap Edit, then «When Any Card Is Tapped», switch «Automation» on and «Confirm Before Running» off.
4. Pay for something small with Apple Pay. The expense appears in Transactions within seconds, and Settings shows your last payment.

It works in physical shops, when you hold your iPhone or Apple Watch to the terminal. Online Apple Pay purchases don't trigger the automation. You need iOS 27 or later.

What is recorded for each payment

• Amount — as Wallet reports it, with the currency sign you chose.
• Place — the shop's name goes into the expense's note, so you can search for «bakery» or «REWE» later.
• Category — from the memory of places described below.
• Account — the card's own account if you've mapped it, otherwise the account you picked for Apple Pay, otherwise your first account.
• Time — the moment you paid.

Each card can go to its own account (Settings → Apple Pay → Cards). If the Telegram bot is linked, it also sends a short message for each payment — amount, account and category — with buttons to change or undo it.

How the category is chosen

When you connect, HonestExpenses looks through your own expenses with notes from the past year and remembers which category each place belongs to — free. After that:

• A known place gets its category straight away. «REWE Markt GmbH», «REWE 0815» and «Rewe» count as one place.
• A new place is sorted by AI: it sees only the shop's name, the amount and your expense categories, and picks one of them. That is one AI action; you can switch it off in Settings → Apple Pay.
• AI not sure? The expense stays in «Other», and you're asked once to pick a category. Your choice is remembered.
• You move an expense yourself — the place goes to that category next time. Your choice always beats the AI's.

The longer you use it, the more places it knows — and a known place needs no AI at all. On Android? Google Wallet and bank payments are tracked the same way, online purchases included.

What you still check

• Refunds aren't recorded — a refund or a zero amount is ignored. Add it by hand if you want it.
• Another currency is never recorded as if it were yours. Paid 45 000 ₸ on holiday? You're asked how much it was in your currency, in Telegram or in Settings → Apple Pay. Save your own rate once, and later payments in that currency are converted at it.
• A declined card. iOS runs the automation on the tap, even if the bank says no. Pay with another card within three minutes, and the first attempt is removed by itself (and can be restored); otherwise delete it yourself.
• Repeats. The same amount at the same place on the same card within 30 seconds counts once. The same coffee a minute later is a second expense.
• Cash and online shopping still need another way: your voice, a receipt photo or a quick manual entry — see tracking cash.

Privacy: what reaches us and what doesn't

• No bank access. Data comes from your iPhone, one payment at a time.
• No card numbers. Apple doesn't give them to shortcuts. We keep the card's display name, such as «Visa ••1234», only to map cards to accounts.
• The shop's name is saved as the expense's note — visible to you and in your exports, like any note you type.
• Your key is stored only as a one-way hash. Our logs never contain the key, the amount or the shop.
• AI sees little. With the category switch on, only a new place's name and the amount go to our AI provider (Google's paid Gemini API) — nothing else from the payment.
• Disconnect any time in Settings → Apple Pay. The key stops working at once; expenses already recorded stay. A new key makes the old shortcut stop as well.

Who gets it and what it costs

Apple Pay tracking is part of Lifetime and the AI plan, and of the free trial of every new account.

• A new account: 7 days of Pro with 20 AI actions, no card needed.
• Lifetime: one payment of 19 $, Apple Pay included, with 50 AI actions for new places, voice and receipts.
• The AI plan: 5,99 $ a month or 47,88 $ a year.

Places it already knows cost nothing. When AI actions run out, payments are still recorded — new places simply land in «Other» until you move them. The HonestExpenses iPhone app is coming soon to the App Store. Until then the Shortcut works with the web app — in Safari or added to your Home Screen.

Questions

Read next

• Log expenses by voice. One sentence, several transactions.
• Automatic expense tracking on Android. Pay with any card — the expense records itself.
• An expense tracker in Telegram. With a full app behind it.
• An expense tracker without a bank link. You log it — in seconds.
• How to track your expenses. And still be doing it in three months.
• Money you share. One ledger, the same numbers for everyone.