Trust

Privacy policy

Effective 16 October 2026

Birrly is a personal money companion for Ethiopia. It is not a bank and it does not log in to your bank. This page is the privacy policy for the Telegram bot, the website, and the Android app Birrly Bridge.

Account

You sign in with Telegram. Birrly receives the identity Telegram shares with the login (such as your Telegram user id and the name Telegram provides) and uses it only to open your ledger. We do not ask for a separate password.

Ledger data

Transactions, categories, budgets, savings, debts, and related notes that you create are stored on Birrly servers so the Telegram bot, the website, and the Android app show the same records. Amounts are what you logged or confirmed. Birrly does not invent a balance.

Bank SMS on Android

Birrly Bridge's core function is to turn bank and mobile-money text alerts into transactions so you do not type them. To do that, the app requests the Android permission to receive incoming SMS (RECEIVE_SMS).

• The app receives new messages only. It does not open your inbox and it does not read messages already saved on the phone.
• Parsing happens on the phone. Messages from known banks and wallets (such as CBE, Telebirr, and M-Pesa) are kept long enough to read the amount and whether money came in or went out. Every other message is ignored and not stored.
• The raw SMS is never uploaded. After you tap Add and choose a category, the app sends only the amount, currency, income or expense, a short description, the category, and a key that stops the same alert from being recorded twice.
• SMS content is not used for advertising and is not sold.

The app asks you to read this explanation and tap Continue before Android shows the system permission. Not now leaves SMS access off. You can turn the permission off later in Android settings.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, Birrly Bridge shows an alert when it detects a bank transaction, so you can add or ignore it. That alert stays on this phone.

What we do not do

• We do not sell personal information or SMS content.
• We do not share your ledger with advertisers.
• We do not read call logs, contacts, or photos.
• The internal operator dashboard shows usage counts, not your salary or transaction memos.

How long we keep it

Ledger records stay until you delete them or ask us to delete the account. Pending bank alerts that you have not added yet stay only on the phone until you add them, ignore them, disconnect, or uninstall the app. Disconnect also clears the sign-in stored on the phone.

Delete your account

You can delete the account yourself. That removes the Telegram-linked profile and the ledger stored for it. Shared budgets and savings you created are removed for the other people in them.

• On the web, open Delete your account and sign in with Telegram.
• In the Telegram Mini App, open Settings and tap Delete account.
• In Telegram, send /deleteaccount to the Birrly bot. It opens the same Settings screen.
• In Birrly Bridge, tap Delete account. That also clears the sign-in and pending bank SMS stored only on the phone.

There is no copy of the raw SMS on our servers, because it is never uploaded.

Children

Birrly is for adults managing their own money. It is not directed at children.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects SMS or the ledger, the date at the top of this page changes with it. The Android app links here before it asks for SMS access.

Contact

Questions and deletion requests go to the Birrly Telegram bot.