No bank login
We never ask for your banking password.
No connection, no stored passwords, no screen-scraping.
It isn't a setting you switch on or a plan you pay for. It's how NBU is built, and it stays that way.
You choose what we see
You import your own statements.
Nothing reaches NBU unless you hand it over.
You export a CSV or PDF from your bank and choose which accounts and months to share. You are the one who builds the bridge.
What we store, and how
Your transactions live in an account only you can reach.
Your data is locked in your own encrypted account.
No other account can read it. We don't ask for or store your name, or your account and card numbers. If one ever slips in through an import, the scrubber strips it out before Valerie, our AI assistant, sees it. We never use your financial data to train AI models.
Your data stays yours
Export it or delete it, whenever you want.
Download or erase everything at any time, no reason needed.
Québec's Law 25 and Canada's PIPEDA give you the right to view, export, correct, or delete your data, wherever you live. Delete, and backups are gone within 30 days. Imported transactions also wait for your review before they count, so you're always in the loop.
Learns from patterns, not people
Shared knowledge that can't point back to you.
Community learning is off by default. Your own history stays private.
If you switch it on, the way you label merchants can improve suggestions for everyone. But NBU never shares your name, your transactions, or the merchant's real name, only a scrambled code. Here is exactly what happens:
When you teach it
You pick a category
You rename a charge. Say this Tim Hortons run is Coffee.
The merchant name becomes a one-way code
The store number is stripped, then a secret key scrambles the plain name into a code that can't be reversed.
Your category rides along as a plain word
The category is never scrambled. It travels beside the code as an ordinary label.
Only that pair leaves your account
The code and the plain category are all the pool receives. Your name, the amount, and the merchant's real name never leave your account.
The pool counts each category under that code
When a category reaches five different people it's ready to share.
shared pool
When Valerie suggests it
Once a category is popular enough, Valerie can suggest it, working only from the one-way code, never a name, an amount, or who taught it.
What Valerie learns
From the shared pool, filed under the one-way code.
What the next person gets
Their import only ever carries the code. Valerie already knows it means Coffee.
Suggested to them
Coffee
How it works, with one Tim Hortons run
When you teach it
You pick a category
You rename a charge. Say this Tim Hortons run is Coffee.
The merchant name becomes a one-way code
First the store number and anything unique to your visit are stripped off, leaving just the plain merchant name. A secret key then scrambles that name into a code that can't be read back or reversed. It reveals nothing about the name.
The same merchant always makes the same code, so the pool can tally it. The code still gives up nothing about the name.
Your category rides along as a plain word
The category you picked is never scrambled. It travels beside the code as an ordinary label, so the pool knows what people called this merchant.
Only that pair leaves your account
The code and the plain category are all the pool receives. Your name, the amount, and the merchant's real name never leave your account, and nothing in the shared pool ties the entry back to you.
The pool counts each category under that code
The pool tallies distinct people per category on the same code. When a category reaches five different people it's ready to share, so one merchant can end up with more than one category.
shared pool
When Valerie suggests it
Once a category is popular enough, Valerie can suggest it, working only from the one-way code, never a name, an amount, or who taught it.
What Valerie learns
From the shared pool, filed under the one-way code.
What the next person gets
Their import only ever carries the code. Valerie already knows it means Coffee.
Suggested to them
Coffee
Future sync, on your terms
If open banking arrives, it stays opt-in.
You choose bank sync. It's never switched on for you.
NBU doesn't connect to open banking today; privacy mode is the default. If it ever ships, it'll be opt-in per bank, you can revoke it, and synced data goes through the same review as anything you import. No credential scraping, ever.
The details, in full.
Want the legal specifics? They're in plain language too.