Privacy policy
Effective October 29, 2026Last updated October 28, 2026
What changed
- 9.1: an Account whose email address was never verified is deleted 30 days after it was created, without an email before or after.
1. About this policy
1.1 Busybee is operated by Fortyseven Ventures Pty Ltd (ACN 702 773 591, ABN 83 702 773 591), a company registered in New South Wales, Australia.
1.2 This policy explains how we collect, use, share, store and delete personal information when you use the Service or join our waitlist. It applies to the Busybee website at busybee.money, the Busybee web app and the Busybee apps for iPhone and Android. Accounts are available only to people who live in the United States, as our Terms of use set out, so the parts of this policy about Accounts and Bank Data describe the Service as it works there.
1.3 We are an Australian company. We handle personal information under Australia’s Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, and under the United States laws that apply to us, including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Clause 7 is our privacy notice under that Act.
2. Definitions
2.1 In this policy:
(a) Account means the Busybee account you create to use the Service.
(b) Bank Data means information about your bank accounts and transactions that we receive through Plaid.
(c) Derived Data means information we create from Bank Data, such as the categories, merchants and recurring charges we identify in your transactions.
(d) Personal Information means information that identifies you, or that could reasonably be linked to you.
(e) Plaid means Plaid Inc., the service that connects your bank to Busybee.
(f) Service means the Busybee website, web app and apps, and everything we provide through them.
(g) we, us and our mean Fortyseven Ventures Pty Ltd, and you and your mean the person who holds an Account or uses the Service.
3. Information we collect
3.1 Account information. Your email address; your password, which we store only as a one-way hash and never in readable form; a display name, which is optional and need not be your real name; the public part of any passkey you register; your authenticator secret and backup codes, which we store encrypted; your Account’s country, which is set when you sign up, from your internet connection or your app store’s country, and cannot be changed; and the time zone your Account uses, which you choose or which we take from your browser or device when you sign up.
3.2 Security information. The browser or app details your device sends when you sign in (its user agent), which we store with each session, and a description made from them (for example “Busybee app on iPhone”); a random token that lets us recognize a device you have signed in with before; and the dates your sessions start and end. When you sign in from a device we do not recognize, we work out the approximate location of the sign-in (city, region and country) from your internet connection so that we can tell you about it by email. We do not store that location. Our database does not store your IP address, although our service records of the requests you make may hold it for up to 7 days.
3.3 Bank Data. When you connect a bank, Plaid collects the following from your bank and passes it to us:
(a) your accounts: their names, types, the last digits of their account numbers, their currencies, and their balances, available balances and credit limits; and
(b) your transactions, including up to two years of past transactions where your bank provides them: amounts, dates, descriptions, merchant names, merchant category codes, Plaid’s category, how each payment was made (for example online or in store) and whether it is still pending.
3.4 We collect only deposit accounts (such as checking, savings, money market accounts and certificates of deposit), credit cards and loans. We never collect investment or brokerage accounts. We do not ask Plaid for the name, address, phone number or email address your bank holds for you, or for details of your income.
3.5 Transaction descriptions can contain the names of other people, and can reveal sensitive information, such as a payment to a medical practice or a union. We do not ask for this information. We hold it only as part of the transaction it appears in, and use it only to provide the Service to you.
3.6 Derived Data and your settings. The categories, merchants, recurring charges and review status we work out from your transactions; the category rules and merchant names you set, which are Derived Data too because each is tied to a description from your bank; and the settings you choose, such as your budgets and your preferences.
3.7 Information you send us. The content of emails you send us, and correction requests you make in the Service.
3.8 Records of activity. The date you last used the Service, the date you accepted our data notice, and records of what happened to your Account and your data, such as when a bank was connected or removed and how many records were collected or deleted. These records hold identifiers, counts, dates and fixed codes only.
3.9 Plan and billing. The plan you have, its status and its dates, which we hold while your Account exists. When you subscribe, Stripe collects your payment details and we do not see your card number. If you subscribe from our Android app, Google Play gives us a token for the purchase, which we keep while the subscription it started exists, or for 30 days if no subscription comes of it, and Google Play receives a record of each payment as clause 6 describes.
3.10 Notifications. If you turn on notifications in our app, your phone’s notification address, and a record of each notification we send you: what kind it is, the bill, budget or bank it is about, and when. We do not store a notification’s words or amounts. Your phone asks us for them when the notification arrives.
3.11 Usage data. Which screens you open and what you do in the Service, for example ticking a transaction in your Inbox, with the app and version you use and when. Each record holds a screen or action and a few fixed choices, never your transactions, amounts or anything you type. It is linked to your Account, and you can see and download it in Settings, Your data. When you sign up on the web, we also note what kind of site sent you (none, our own website, a search engine, social media or another site, never its address) and, if the link you followed named a campaign, which of our campaigns it was, or only that it was another one. Screens you view before you create an Account are only counted, with nothing that identifies you.
3.12 We do not collect your bank login, Social Security number, date of birth, postal address, phone number, legal name or any government identifier.
4. How we collect information
4.1 We collect Account information, settings and the information you send us directly from you.
4.2 We collect security information from the device you use to access the Service.
4.3 We collect Bank Data through Plaid. When you connect a bank, you sign in to it through Plaid, on Plaid’s pages or your bank’s own, never ours. Your bank or Plaid may let you choose which accounts to share. Plaid then collects Bank Data from your bank and passes it to us. We never see your bank login.
4.4 We collect usage data from your use of the web app and apps, as clause 3.11 describes. We also count visits to the Busybee website, with nothing that identifies you, as clause 11.2 describes.
5. How we use information
5.1 We use Personal Information to:
(a) provide the Service, including showing your spending, categories, merchants, recurring charges and budgets;
(b) keep your Account and data secure, including verifying sign-ins and telling you about sign-ins from new devices;
(c) send you the emails described in clause 13, and the notifications you turn on;
(d) respond to your requests and questions;
(e) find and fix faults in the Service;
(f) understand which parts of the Service are used, so that we can improve it; and
(g) meet our legal obligations.
5.2 We never sell Personal Information or Bank Data, and we never share it for advertising. We never use Bank Data for advertising or marketing, and we never use it to train artificial intelligence models.
6. Who receives information
6.1 We use the following services to run Busybee. Each receives only what it needs for its role. Most act only for us. Plaid, Google, Apple and Google Play also have their own relationship with you or with us, which their own policies cover.
| Service | What it does | What it receives | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| PlanetScale, on Amazon Web Services | Hosts our database and its backups. | Everything we hold, encrypted at rest. | Australia (Sydney) |
| Cloudflare | Runs the Service on its network, queues background work, keeps our logs, sends our emails, counts visits to this website, and receives and stores email sent to us in our support mailbox. | The requests you make, processed in memory; logs holding identifiers, counts and error names only; the address and text of emails we send you; emails you send us, and our replies; and, for website visits, the page, the website you came from, your country and whether your device is a phone or a computer, with nothing that identifies you. | Cloudflare's global network; log archive and support mailbox with an Oceania location hint |
| GoogleSigning in with Google and notifications are not yet available. | Lets you sign in with your Google account if you choose to, and delivers notifications to our Android app if you turn them on. | If you sign in with Google, we send Google nothing; Google tells us your Google account identifier and verified email address. In our Android app, Google also sends your name and profile picture, which we discard without storing them. If you turn on notifications in our Android app: your phone's notification address, and for each notification a reference number and its type (such as a bill due). Never an amount, a merchant or a bank name: your phone gets those from us. | Google's global network |
| AppleNot yet available. | Lets you sign in with your Apple Account if you choose to, forwards our emails to you if you hide your email address from us, and delivers notifications to our iPhone app if you turn them on. | If you sign in with Apple: a request to end that sign-in when you delete your account or disconnect Apple. If you hide your email address: the emails we send you, which pass through Apple's private relay. Apple tells us your Apple account identifier and email address. If you turn on notifications in our iPhone app: your phone's notification address, and for each notification a reference number, its type (such as a bill due) and the words "You have a new alert from Busybee." Never an amount, a merchant or a bank name: your phone gets those from us. | United States |
| Plaid | Connects bank accounts in the United States, for accounts based there. | For an account in the United States: the bank login you enter on Plaid's own pages, and an identifier we give your account. Plaid returns that bank's account and transaction data to us. | United States |
| Stripe | Processes payments for Busybee subscriptions, on the web and in our apps. | Your email address, your card details, your billing country, an identifier we give your account and whether you started paying on the web or in our iPhone or Android app. Never your bank data. | United States and elsewhere. Stripe keeps invoices and payment records for five years, as Australian tax law requires. |
| Google Play | Records purchases made from our Android app in the United States, as Google requires for payments made outside Google Play. | For each payment on such a subscription: the amount, the tax, the time and the region. Never your name, email address or bank data. | United States |
| Anthropic | Helps us sort and draft replies to emails you send us, when we ask it to. | When we ask it to help with an email you sent us: that email's text. | United States |
6.2 Plaid collects Bank Data from your bank with your permission and passes it to us. What Plaid itself does with the information you give it, including your bank login, is covered by Plaid’s End User Privacy Policy, not this policy. We send Plaid only an identifier we give your Account. When you remove a bank, we ask Plaid to end the connection before we delete anything.
6.3 We choose services whose terms require them to protect the information they receive and to use it only to provide their service to us.
6.4 We disclose Personal Information to the services in clause 6.1 only as that clause describes, and otherwise only where the law requires it, for example to comply with a subpoena or court order, or with your consent.
6.5 If you turn on notifications, Apple delivers them to an iPhone and Google to an Android phone. They receive your phone’s notification address and, for each notification, a reference number and its type, never an amount, a merchant or a bank name.
6.6 We have no affiliates that receive your information, and we do not share it with other companies for their own marketing.
7. Privacy notice under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
7.1 Federal law gives you the right to know how financial companies share your personal information, and to limit some of that sharing. This clause is that notice.
7.2 The personal information we hold is described in clause 3. It includes your email address, your account balances and your transaction history.
What we share and why
7.3 This table lists the reasons financial companies can share their customers’ personal information, whether we share for each reason, and whether you can limit that sharing.
| Reasons we can share your personal information | Do we share? | Can you limit this sharing? |
|---|---|---|
| For our everyday business purposes, such as running your Account, processing your payments, and responding to court orders and legal investigations | Yes, with the services listed in clause 6, and where the law requires | No |
| For our marketing purposes, to offer our products and services to you | No | We don’t share |
| For joint marketing with other financial companies | No | We don’t share |
| For our affiliates’ everyday business purposes | No. We have no affiliates | We don’t share |
| For our affiliates to market to you | No. We have no affiliates | We don’t share |
| For companies that are not our affiliates to market to you | No | We don’t share |
Can you limit this sharing?
7.4 We share your personal information only for our everyday business purposes, which federal law does not let customers limit, and we do not share it in any of the ways the law lets you limit. So there is no sharing for you to opt out of.
7.5 If that ever changes, we will tell you before we share, and give you a way to opt out first.
7.6 How we protect your information is described in clause 8. For questions about this notice, email privacy@busybee.money.
8. Storage and security
8.1 Your Account information, Bank Data and Derived Data are stored in Australia (Sydney). Australia’s privacy laws differ from those in the United States, and this policy applies to your information wherever it is held.
8.2 We protect the information we hold by:
(a) storing our database encrypted at rest, and encrypting information in transit;
(b) requiring every Account to use a second factor, such as a passkey or an authenticator app, in addition to a password;
(c) emailing you when someone signs in to your Account from a device we do not recognize, with a link that ends every session; and
(d) keeping a record of changes to your bank connections and data that our database does not allow to be changed or deleted.
8.3 Only the people who run Busybee can reach our database, and we look at your data only to fix a problem you have reported, keep the Service running and secure, or meet a legal obligation.
8.4 No method of storing or sending information is completely secure. If you think your Account has been accessed without your permission, contact us immediately.
9. Keeping and deleting information
9.1 We keep information only for as long as we need it, as follows:
| Information | When it is deleted |
|---|---|
| Bank Data and the Derived Data made from it | When you remove the bank in the Service, when the connection is ended at Plaid or at your bank, or when we end it because your plan ended or you have more bank connections than your plan includes. Derived Data that another of your connected banks still supplies, such as a category rule for a description that bank also sends, stays while that bank is connected. |
| Your settings, such as budgets and preferences | When you delete your Account. |
| Your plan, its status and its dates | When you delete your Account. Stripe keeps invoices and payment records for five years, as Australian tax law requires. |
| Your Account | When you delete it in Settings or through our delete your account page, or when you ask us to by email. We then delete everything we hold about you, except as the other rows of this table describe. |
| A record of a bank connection we could not end before your Account was deleted | We keep only what we need to end it: our identifiers for it and, if Plaid gave it to us, its encrypted access. We delete it as soon as Plaid confirms the connection has ended, or after 30 days if Plaid never gave us that access. |
| An Account with a verified email address and no bank connected that has not been used | Unless you still have a subscription, we email you after 335 days without activity and delete the Account after 365 days, and never less than 30 days after that email. |
| An Account whose email address was never verified | 30 days after it was created. We do not email the address before or after, because it was never confirmed as yours. |
| Records of each time we collect your bank data | 30 days after a failed collection and 90 days after a successful one. Notices of changes we receive from Plaid are deleted after 30 days. |
| Sessions and recognized devices | A session ends after 7 days without use and no later than 30 days after sign-in. A recognized device is forgotten 400 days after its last use. |
| Notifications we send to your phone | 30 days after we create them. |
| Your phone’s notification address | When you sign out on that phone, end all sessions, reset your password or delete your Account, or after 60 days in which the app has not been opened on that phone. |
| Usage data | 13 months after it is recorded, or when you delete your Account. Counts that identify no one are deleted after 13 months. |
| Emails you send us | 12 months after the matter they concern is closed. |
| Service records, which hold identifiers, counts and error names only | 7 days, and our archive after 6 years. |
| Backups | Deleted information remains in our encrypted backups in Australia (Sydney) until they expire, within 2 days. |
| Records of what happened to your Account and data, which hold identifiers, counts, dates and fixed codes only | Kept indefinitely, including after your Account is deleted, as the record of what happened to your Account and its data. |
9.2 We do not de-identify Bank Data to keep it for other purposes. When we no longer need it, we delete it.
10. Your choices
10.1 Wherever you live, you can:
(a) see what we hold about you, and download it as a JSON file or your transactions as a CSV file, at any time in Settings, Your data;
(b) ask us to correct information, in Settings, Your data, or by email. We respond within 10 business days, and either correct the information or explain why we have not. Some Bank Data comes from your bank and can only be corrected there; in that case we tell you how;
(c) remove a bank at any time in Settings, which ends its connection and deletes the Bank Data and Derived Data collected through it;
(d) delete your Account at any time in Settings, or ask for your Account or your data to be deleted through our delete your account page. If you ask us by email to delete your Account or remove a bank, we do so within 10 business days; and
(e) choose which notifications our app sends you in Settings, or turn notifications off there or in your phone’s settings.
10.2 We respond to any other request about your Personal Information within 30 days. We do not charge for access, correction, export or deletion, and we do not treat you differently for making a request.
10.3 Some states give their residents specific privacy rights. We offer the choices in this clause to everyone, whatever state you live in. If we refuse a request, we tell you why in writing.
11. Cookies and similar technologies
11.1 The Busybee web app and apps use only the cookies and device storage they need to work:
(a) a session cookie that keeps you signed in, for up to 30 days;
(b) short-lived cookies used while you complete a second factor or register a passkey;
(c) a cookie that lets a browser you choose to trust skip the second factor, for 30 days;
(d) a cookie holding a random token that recognizes a device you have signed in with before, for 400 days after its last use;
(e) cookies that remember, for 12 months, your theme and whether you have chosen to hide amounts on screen, which is a display preference and not a security measure;
(f) browser storage that remembers which groups of accounts you have collapsed in the sidebar; and
(g) browser storage that, until you sign up or close the tab, holds the address of the website that sent you to Busybee and the campaign named in the link you followed, so that we can note them at sign-up as clause 3.11 describes.
11.2 The Busybee website at busybee.money sets no cookies. It counts how many times each page is opened and how quickly it loads, keeping only the page, the website a visitor came from, their country, whether their device is a phone or a computer, and the load time, never an IP address, a cookie or anything that identifies a person. The web app and apps record the usage data in clause 3.11, which is linked to your Account. Both are for our own use only: our hosting provider (clause 6) stores the website counts, and we never give either to another company for its own analytics or advertising. We do not use advertising or tracking technologies anywhere in the Service, and we never use usage data to follow you across other websites or apps, so a browser signal such as Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track has no tracking or sale of information to turn off.
12. Children
12.1 The Service is for people aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from anyone under 18, and if we learn that we hold Personal Information about someone under 18, we delete it.
13. Emails we send
13.1 We send emails about the security of your Account (such as sign-ins from new devices and changes to your password or second factor), about your bank connections (such as reminders before a connection needs you to sign in to your bank again), about your Account (such as a warning before an unused Account is deleted and confirmation of deletion), and notices of changes to our terms, this policy or our prices.
13.2 These emails are part of the Service and cannot be switched off. We do not send marketing emails.
14. Security incidents
14.1 If a security breach affects your Personal Information, we notify you, and any authority the law requires us to notify, in the way the law that applies to you requires.
15. The waitlist
15.1 Where Busybee is not open yet, you can join our waitlist on the website. The waitlist form sends us only your email address, which we store in lower case with the date and time you joined. With it we store the country your connection comes from and whether the form was sent from the website or one of our apps. We do not ask for your name or anything else, and joining does not create an Account.
15.2 We use your waitlist email address only to send you one email when Busybee opens. We do not email you when you join. If you ask us by email to join the waitlist, we add your email address and use it in the same way. When you send the form, we use your IP address to protect the form from misuse and to tell which country your connection comes from, and we do not store it in our database.
15.3 Your waitlist email address is stored in our database in Australia (Sydney) and is handled by the services in clause 6.1 that host our database, run our website and send our emails. Only the people who run Busybee can see the waitlist, and we never sell it or share it.
15.4 We keep your waitlist email address until you create a Busybee account with that email address, or ask us to remove it. Once we delete it, it remains in our encrypted backups until they expire, within 2 days. To remove it, or to see or correct it, email privacy@busybee.money from that address.
16. Complaints
16.1 If you have a complaint about how we handle your Personal Information, email privacy@busybee.money. We respond within 30 days and tell you what we will do about it.
16.2 If you are in Australia and our response does not resolve your complaint, you can take it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), online at www.oaic.gov.au or by phone on 1300 363 992.
17. Changes to this policy
17.1 We may change this policy. If a change is material, we email you at least 30 days before it takes effect.
17.2 A change that allows us to use or share information in a new way does not apply to information we collected before the change, unless you agree.
18. Contact us
18.1 For any question about this policy or your Personal Information, email privacy@busybee.money. For anything else about the Service, email support@busybee.money. Our Terms of use set out the rest of our agreement with you.
Be ready when Busybee opens.
Email support@busybee.money to join.