UPI changed how India pays — and broke how India tracks
UPI processes billions of transactions every month, and for most of us it has replaced cash for everything from the sabzi mandi to rent. But convenience has a side effect: dozens of small, instant payments scattered across Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, and your banking app. Each one takes two seconds to make and zero seconds to remember. At the end of the month, your bank statement is a wall of UPI reference numbers that tells you nothing about where the money actually went.
Traditional expense trackers ask you to log each payment by hand — which nobody sustains past week two. Others try to parse SMS notifications, which breaks constantly and misses transactions. Paisewise takes a different approach: every UPI payment triggers a transaction alert email from the bank it debited, and Paisewise reads those alerts. Nothing to link, nothing to type.
How automatic UPI tracking works in Paisewise
1. Sign in and grant read-only access to your alert mail
Every UPI payment ultimately debits a bank account, and Indian banks email an alert for it. Sign in with Google, allow read-only access to that mail, and Paisewise picks up UPI spends regardless of which app you paid from — Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM, or your bank's own app. Multiple accounts, multiple apps, one timeline. There is no bank login, no UPI PIN, and no account linking involved.
2. Every payment categorised, and editable
Known issuer alert formats are parsed with built-in templates, and anything unfamiliar goes through an AI extraction step, so the merchant, amount, date and account come out structured. Each transaction lands in a category — and if you disagree, recategorise it, one at a time or in bulk. You can add your own categories too, and the changes persist.
3. See totals that finally make sense
Instead of a wall of transaction IDs, you get answers: how much you spent this month, how that compares with last month, and which bank or card each spend came from. You can also ask the AI chat directly — “how much went to food delivery in June?” — and it answers from your own ledger rather than from generic advice.
Why not just check the UPI app's history?
Each UPI app shows only its own slice of your spending, has limited categorisation, and cannot combine payments across apps or accounts. If you pay from Google Pay on one account and PhonePe on another — as most Indian households do — no single app can total it up. Paisewise sits at the bank-alert level, below the apps, so the picture is consistent no matter how many payment apps you use. Pair it with categories and spend trends and the data starts working for you instead of just being recorded.
When an alert never arrives
Alert coverage is only as good as what your bank actually emails. If a spend is missing — an account with alerts switched off, or a period before you signed in — upload the bank or card statement PDF. Paisewise reads it and reconciles it against the transactions it already has, so gaps close without anything being counted twice.
Is this safe? What exactly can Paisewise see?
Access is read-only and scoped to transaction alert mail from known bank and card-issuer senders — not your personal conversations. Paisewise cannot send, delete or modify mail, and it cannot move money: there is no payment rail connected to it at all. You never share a net-banking password, UPI PIN, or card PIN, and you can revoke access from your Google account at any time. We do not sell your data. More detail is on our FAQ page and in the privacy policy.
What you get today
- UPI spends captured automatically from bank and card transaction alerts
- Built-in categories plus your own, with bulk recategorisation that sticks
- Monthly spend and received totals, month-on-month trend, and a per-bank breakdown
- Statement PDF upload and reconciliation to fill gaps in alert coverage
- AI chat that answers questions about your own transactions
What is not built: live Account Aggregator bank connections, account balances, investments or net worth, and a family or household view. The roadmap section on the homepage lists these honestly rather than hiding them in a feature grid.
The web app is live for everyone at /home and free while in beta. Android and iOS are in a seat-limited private beta.