Track UPI spending automatically from your bank messages, with no bank login

You can track UPI spending automatically on Android by letting an app read the debit SMS your bank sends and the payment notifications from Google Pay, PhonePe or Paytm, with no bank login at all. Message Alarm's free spending tracker works exactly like this, on the phone, and adds your payments into one total no matter which UPI app you paid with.

What it gives up: it has no SMS permission and doesn't read your SMS inbox, so it can't import the months before you installed it. It counts from today. It is also Android only. If either is a problem for you, the comparison further down will help you pick something else.

Why is UPI spending so hard to see?

Because it is scattered on purpose. UPI lets you pay from any app into any bank, so a normal week looks like this: chai and auto fares on PhonePe, a phone recharge on Paytm, rent through your bank's own app, a split dinner on Google Pay. Each app shows its own history. None of them shows the others.

Two bank accounts make it worse. So does the size of the payments. Twenty small amounts a day don't feel like spending, which is exactly why they add up unnoticed.

The one place everything meets is your bank. Whatever app you used, the money left an account, and banks usually send a message when it does. A tracker that reads those messages, plus the UPI apps' own notifications, gets the full picture without you joining anything up.

What should a UPI expense tracker ask of you?

As little as possible. Our short list, and you may weigh it differently:

• No bank login. A tracker has no reason to hold the keys to your account when the amounts are already in your messages.
• Work on the phone, so your payment history isn't sitting on someone else's server.
• No ads in an app that knows where you spend money.
• Honesty about what it can't see. Every tracker misses cash. Some miss more.

We would rather lose last year's history than give an app my bank login or my whole SMS inbox. That is an opinion, not a rule, and plenty of people happily make the other trade for the sake of a long history.

How are Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm payments tracked from bank messages?

Message Alarm needs Notification access, the permission it also uses to ring alarms. With the spending tracker on, each notification that looks like money moving gets read on the phone: the amount in rupees, the type and, when the message names one, the person or shop it went to. The result is one line in a list that never leaves the phone.

Two kinds of message feed it. The first is your bank's SMS, which arrives as a notification from your messaging app. The second is the payment and banking apps themselves: Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM, MobiKwik, CRED, YONO SBI and the HDFC, iMobile, Axis and Kotak apps are among those it reads. Ordinary chats are ignored, so a friend writing "paid you back" doesn't count as money.

Every entry goes under one type: card purchase, transfer, cash out (an ATM withdrawal, for example), bill & recharge, debit or received. From there you get spent and received totals, a view by day, where the money went, which account or app it was paid from, and a trend against the previous period. The "paid from" view is the interesting one for UPI users, because it shows which account carries most of the load.

Bank SMS arrive without mobile data. UPI app notifications need the phone online, which it usually is right after a UPI payment.

Walnut is now axio: how do the alternatives compare?

If you are looking for a Walnut alternative, know that Walnut itself is still on Google Play. The listing is now called axio: Expense Tracker & Budget, with 10M+ downloads. If you use it and it does what you need, there is no reason to switch. If you want something that never asks for a login and keeps its data on the phone, here is how the options line up on the facts Google Play publishes:

One honest point in favour of a dedicated budgeting app: setting budgets and planning ahead is what it is built for. Message Alarm's tracker is a running total and a breakdown, nothing more. It is there for people who want to see the money without managing a second app.

What can't a message-based tracker see?

Cash is the big one. The vegetable seller you paid in notes leaves no trace. Neither do payments made before you turned the tracker on, since the app has no SMS permission and no way to read old messages.

It also misses any payment that doesn't become a notification on your phone. That happens when a bank sends no message for a payment and the UPI app's notifications are switched off, when someone else pays on your behalf, or when Android has stopped Message Alarm in the background. The last one you can fix, and the steps below do.

Is tracking from bank messages accurate?

The amounts are as accurate as the messages, because they are copied from them. The figure in a bank SMS is the figure your bank reports. Where it can slip is in reading the wording: an unusual message might be filed under the wrong type, or something that isn't a payment might be taken for one.

When that happens, open the entry and tap Not a transaction? It drops out of your totals. The same goes if you ever see one payment listed twice. And if you want to start over, Delete all clears the tracker.

How do I set up UPI tracking without a bank login?

1. Install Message Alarm from Google Play and give it Notification access when asked.
2. Turn on the spending tracker in Message Alarm.
3. Keep notifications on for your SMS app and for Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm or whichever UPI apps you use.
4. Open Fix background issues and set battery use to Unrestricted so Android doesn't stop the app.
5. Pay for something small by UPI and check that it appears under recent transactions.

Your messages are checked on your phone and are never uploaded. The app has no ads, doesn't sell data, and doesn't ask for SMS, contacts, location or file permissions. It does send a small amount of technical data (crash reports, anonymous usage events), never your messages.

Once it's running, the same card messages can remind you before a credit card bill is due. Shopkeepers can have UPI payments announced aloud, like a soundbox. For the general idea behind all of this, see expense tracking from bank messages, and for Bangladesh's wallets, the bKash and Nagad version.

Message Alarm is a free Android app that rings a loud alarm, even when your phone is on silent, when an important message arrives from a person or with a word you choose. Its spending tracker, bill reminders, Smart Tray, Quiet mode, saved and deleted messages, history and smart features are all free and unlimited. The free plan only limits alarms: 2 watched apps, 3 app alarms a day and 15 a week, and 2 auto-replies a week. No ads, and it doesn't work on iPhone, because iOS doesn't let apps read notifications.