Privacy Policy

Bearing (also marketed as BearingMoney, at bearing.money) is a budgeting and personal-finance web app operated by Quant Security LLC (“Bearing”, “we”, “us”). We are the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.

Questions, requests, or complaints: email support@quantsecurity.com or write to Quant Security LLC, Dallas, Texas, USA.

Bearing runs in one of two modes, and what we collect differs completely between them:

• Demo mode — when Bearing runs without any service keys configured, the entire app works from a fictional, built-in dataset held in server memory. There are no accounts, no sign-in, and nothing you do is persisted server-side: a server restart erases everything. No personal data is collected in demo mode.
• Account mode — when you create an account, we collect and store the data described in the next section so the product can work.

In account mode we collect and store:

• Account & profile: your email address (used for sign-in) and a scrypt-hashed password, display name, income amount and pay frequency, next payday, household size, budgeting-style preference, and your AI-consent and onboarding timestamps.
• Financial data: bank account metadata (institution, account name, type, last-four mask, balances), transactions (date, description, merchant, amount, pending status, category), budgets and per-category budget items, recurring bills, detected merchant subscriptions, spending rules and their violations, financial goals, and your saved daily briefs.
• Billing: your Stripe customer and subscription IDs, plan, and subscription status. We never see or store your card number — payment details go directly to Stripe.
• Bank connection: when you connect a bank through Plaid, your bank username and password go directly to Plaid and never touch our servers. We store only an encrypted access token (AES-256-GCM) that lets us sync your transactions.
• Security records: an audit log of sensitive actions on your account (for example, connecting a bank or exporting your data), and a monthly counter of AI messages used for quota purposes.
• Technical: a session cookie that keeps you signed in, a consent flag stored in your browser, and standard hosting request logs (including IP addresses) held briefly by our hosting provider.

We collect no analytics, no crash reports, and no advertising or tracking data — none of that exists in the product today. If we ever add product analytics, we will ask for your consent first (see the cookie banner) and update this policy.

• Performance of our contract with you — running the service: accounts and sign-in, storing and displaying your financial data, budget math, bill tracking, syncing your bank via Plaid, and billing your subscription via Stripe.
• Legitimate interests — keeping the service secure and accountable: the audit log of sensitive account actions, fraud and abuse prevention, and short-lived hosting logs.
• Consent — AI analysis of your financial data. Bearing only sends your transaction details and budget statistics to an AI provider after you switch on the AI-analysis consent toggle in the app, and you can switch it off at any time in Settings. Consent would also be the basis for any future product analytics — which we will ask for separately before ever enabling.
• Legal obligation — retaining billing and tax records for as long as the law requires.

We share data only with the service providers below, only for the purposes stated, and never for advertising. We do not sell your data.

• Neon — database hosting (serverless Postgres, provisioned through Vercel). Hosts the database that stores your account and all app data described above. Authentication itself is first-party — built and operated by Bearing, not a third-party identity provider.
• Plaid — bank connections. When you link a bank, you enter your bank credentials directly with Plaid; Plaid receives your bank login — we never do. Plaid sends us your account and transaction data.
• Stripe — payments and subscription billing. Your card details go directly to Stripe and never touch our servers; we store only Stripe’s customer/subscription identifiers.
• Anthropic — AI processing. With your consent, transaction descriptions and amounts and aggregate budget statistics are sent to Anthropic’s API to generate categorization and coaching text. No bank credentials, access tokens, or card numbers are ever sent.Per Anthropic’s commercial API terms, inputs and outputs are not used to train their models. OpenAI may be used as an optional fallback AI provider under the same constraints, only if configured.
• Vercel — hosting (United States). Processes requests to serve the app and keeps short-lived request logs.
• RevenueCat — future: when we ship native mobile apps, RevenueCat will manage in-app purchases. It is not in use today; we will update this policy when it is.

• Account and financial data — kept until you delete your account (in-app deletion or by emailing us), then removed from our database.
• Audit logs — 12 months, then deleted (or at account deletion, whichever comes first).
• Billing records — Stripe retains invoice and tax records for as long as legal and tax requirements demand (typically 7 years), even after account deletion.
• AI requests— not stored by Bearing; handled transiently. Per the API providers’ terms, your requests are not used to train their models.
• Hosting logs — held briefly by Vercel per their platform retention window.
• Demo mode — nothing is retained; server memory only.

Bearing is hosted and processes data in the United States. If you use Bearing from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, your data is transferred to the US. Where required, we and our processors rely on safeguards such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) and, where applicable, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework certifications of our providers, to protect data transferred internationally.

Depending on where you live, you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you;
• Rectify inaccurate data;
• Erase your data (“right to be forgotten”);
• Port your data — receive it in a structured, machine-readable format;
• Restrict or object to certain processing;
• Withdraw consent at any time (for example, the AI-analysis toggle) without affecting prior processing;
• Complain to a supervisory authority — if you are in the EEA/UK, you may lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

We do not sell or share your personal informationas those terms are defined in the CCPA/CPRA — and we never have. We use no third-party advertising, cross-context behavioral advertising, or tracking. California residents have the rights to know, access, correct, delete, and port their personal information, and the right to non-discrimination for exercising those rights. Exercise them via the methods in the next section; we do not need a “Do Not Sell or Share” link because no sale or sharing occurs.

• In the app: Settings offers Export my data (downloads everything we hold about you as JSON) and Delete my account & data (permanently removes your data). You can edit your profile details directly, and switch AI analysis off at any time.
• By email: send your request to support@quantsecurity.com. We will verify the request comes from the account’s email address and respond within the timeframe required by applicable law (30 days under GDPR, 45 days under CCPA).

Bearing is not directed at children and is not intended for anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 16. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us at support@quantsecurity.com and we will delete it.

• Encryption in transit: all traffic between your device, Bearing, and our providers uses TLS (HTTPS).
• Encryption at rest: our database is encrypted at rest by Neon, and Plaid bank-access tokens are additionally encrypted by us with AES-256-GCM before they are handled at all.
• First-party authentication: passwords are hashed with scrypt (never stored or logged in plain text), and sessions are stored server-side — your browser holds only a random session token in an HttpOnly cookie.
• Per-user scoping: every database query is scoped to your user id, so your requests can only ever reach your own rows.
• Least data: bank credentials and card numbers never touch our servers by design — Plaid and Stripe hold them.
• Audit trail: sensitive account actions are logged so unusual activity can be investigated.

No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your personal data we will notify you and the relevant authorities as required by law.

Bearing uses only essential cookies and local storage: a first-party bearing_session cookie that keeps you signed in (account mode only) and a bearing-consentflag that remembers your cookie-banner choice. There are no analytics, ad, or tracking cookies. If we ever add product analytics, it will run only for users who chose “Allow future analytics” in the banner — and we will update this policy first.

When our data practices change, we will update this page and the “Last updated” date above. For material changes we will give you prominent notice — in the app or by email — before the change takes effect. Continued use of Bearing after the effective date means the updated policy applies.

Quant Security LLC · Quant Security LLC, Dallas, Texas, USA
Privacy requests: support@quantsecurity.com

See also our Terms of Service.