Receipt Scanner Privacy in 2026: What ReceiptIQ AI Keeps on Your iPhone

A receipt says a lot about you: where you shop, what you buy, when, and how much you spend. So "is this app private?" deserves a straight answer, not a slogan. This page describes exactly what ReceiptIQ AI does with a receipt you scan — what stays on your iPhone, what is sent to be read, and what is kept afterwards.

What your receipts reveal

That is why the questions that matter are concrete: what is sent, who reads it, what is stored, and is anything sold?

What happens when you scan a receipt

1. Your iPhone reads the text first. The text on the receipt is recognised on the phone itself, using Apple's built-in text recognition.
2. The photo and the recognised text are sent to be read — the words and numbers, plus where each line sits on the receipt so prices can be matched to the right items. They travel over an encrypted connection.
3. The photo and text are turned into a receipt — store, date, every line item, tax and total — and the result is sent straight back to your phone.
4. The photo, the text and the result are not kept on our servers. They are not saved to any database, and they are not written to our service logs. Your receipts and photos are stored only on your iPhone.

Voice entries and bank statements you import work the same way: the transcribed or recognised text is sent to be read, the result comes back, and the text is not kept.

What we do keep

To run a free tier fairly and to stop abuse, the service keeps a small amount of data that contains no receipt contents:

• A scan count per device. The app identifies itself with a random ID that Apple generates for our app on your phone. It is not your name, email, Apple ID or phone number, and it is used to count scans toward the free limit and daily limits.
• Subscription events from Apple — for example that a subscription renewed or was cancelled. Apple sends these without your name or email address.
• Anonymous daily totals — how many scans succeeded, which app versions and languages were used, and which countries requests came from. These are totals, not records of what anyone bought.

Where your saved receipts can go — only if you choose

• iCloud sync (optional). If you turn it on, your receipts, including photos, sync through your own iCloud account to your other devices. We cannot see that data. Apple encrypts iCloud data in transit and on its servers; with Apple's Advanced Data Protection turned on, it is end-to-end encrypted.
• Family Sharing (optional). Receipts and photos travel directly from one family phone to another, nearby, over an encrypted connection. There is no account, and nothing is stored on a ReceiptIQ AI server.
• Report a Problem (optional). If a scan goes wrong and you send us a report, the receipt photo is attached only if you agree to include it.

What works without internet

Adding receipts by hand, viewing and editing them, budgets, charts and exporting reports all work offline. Scanning a receipt and voice entry need a connection, because that is when the receipt is read.

Questions to ask any receipt app

• Is the receipt photo kept after it has been read, and where is it stored?
• Is the receipt kept on the company's servers after it has been read?
• Do you need an account with an email address?
• Are there ads, or advertising and analytics tools, inside the app?
• Does the privacy policy say your data can be shared with "partners"?
• Can you export your data, and delete it?

For the formal version of everything above, including the service providers involved, read the full privacy policy.