How bank sync works in Bilance: what it can see

Bilance is the budgeting app built for European banks — it connects all your accounts automatically and does the categorising for you. That first word, “connects”, is where most people hesitate: what does connecting a bank account actually mean, and what can the app see? Here is the honest answer.

The short version: Bilance never sees your bank login. Your bank gives Bilance a read-only, time-limited permission that you approve yourself, in your own bank’s app or website. Bilance can read your transactions and balances; it cannot move money, make changes, or see your credentials. And when you want to stop, you stop the syncing or delete the connection right in Bilance — it takes a moment.

The legal foundation: PSD2

Bank connections in Bilance are built on PSD2, the EU’s payment services directive. PSD2 requires European banks to let you share your own account data with licensed third parties — securely, with your explicit consent, and under the supervision of financial regulators. This is the same framework the whole European open-banking ecosystem runs on, covering 2,300+ bank connections across the EU/EEA.

In practice that means connecting a bank is not a workaround or a scraping trick. It is a regulated, bank-approved channel that was designed for exactly this purpose.

What happens when you connect an account

1. You pick your bank in Bilance.
2. You are sent to your own bank’s login — its app or website. Bilance never sees this step; your credentials go to your bank, and only to your bank.
3. Your bank asks you to approve read-only access to the accounts you choose.
4. Your bank hands Bilance a limited-time token — a permission slip, not a key.

From then on, Bilance uses that token to sync your transactions and balances automatically, and does the categorising for you. No manual imports, no spreadsheets.

What Bilance can see — and what it can’t

The access is read-only by design — it is a different class of permission than the one you use to log in, and it cannot be escalated into payments or changes.

You stay in control

The token is limited-time: your bank must ask you to authenticate again when more than 180 days have passed (Regulation (EU) 2022/2360), sooner with some banks and providers. And you can end the connection yourself at any moment: stop the syncing or delete the bank connection in Bilance, and the data sharing stops with it. And if you decide to leave Bilance, deleting your account erases your data — transactions, balances, and login info; backups are kept for 7 days for data integrity, then permanently deleted.

One more thing worth saying plainly: Bilance is a paid app, so there are no ads in it. Our business is building an app you love enough to pay for.

For the full picture — infrastructure, encryption, app-level protection — see our commitment to security.