Privacy

Friends see moments, never money. Here’s what stays on your phone, what your friends see, and what melo’s service holds.

Updated October 29, 2026. melo is in testing, and this page changes with it.

What stays on your phone

Your spending ledger: amounts, places, dates, categories and notes. melo never uploads it. It’s part of your iPhone’s iCloud or computer backup, like other app data.
Receipts, email content and visit history, if you use those features. They stay out of backups.
Your encryption keys. They never leave your phone.

Moments: an emoji, the place or the kind of purchase, a rough time of day, and a repeat count such as “Twice this week”. Never an amount, a card or an exact time.
Each moment waits 15 minutes before friends can see it. Hide it from the notification, mark a place as never shared, or turn on ghost mode to pause all sharing.
Health, bills, income and anything uncategorized are never shared, and neither are places like pharmacies, clinics, liquor stores and casinos.
Challenges share only whether you joined and whether you made it. Your days stay on your phone.
Group splits are the one place an amount is shared, and only when you send one: the bill’s title, total, date, category and shares go to that group. Your receipt, note and other purchases stay private.
Moments, reactions, replies and splits are end-to-end encrypted on your phone for the friends and groups who receive them. There’s no public feed.

Your account: email address, display name, handle and profile photo, plus a phone number if you choose to verify one for contact discovery.
Who your friends are and which groups you’re in.
Encrypted messages, which it can’t read, and the delivery details needed to route them.
Notification tokens, so your phone can get alerts.
The service runs on Supabase. Sign-in emails go through Resend, and notifications through Apple Push Notification service.

Ghost mode, from the Friends or You tab, pauses all sharing.
On a new phone, sign in and choose Start fresh on this phone. You keep your friends and groups; updates shared before stay on the old phone.
You can delete your account from the You tab.
melo never links to your bank. Purchases come from a Shortcuts automation you set up and can turn off.