Masareef VS Opalstack

Masareef's answer

• React Native and Expo, TypeScript throughout
• SQLite on the device as the source of truth, so the app works with no connection
• A custom on-device parser for the bank alerts, plus an Android notification listener that keeps working when the app is closed
• Cloudflare Workers for the backend, with end-to-end encryption where a key is needed and the key derivation done on the device
• RevenueCat for subscriptions

Masareef's answer

Three reasons.

The competition is built for American and European banks. Plaid style account linking covers the US and Western Europe well and covers Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE badly or not at all. Masareef reads the alert your bank sends anyway, so bank coverage does not depend on a data aggregator having signed a deal in your country.

It never asks for your bank credentials. There is nothing to link, no password to hand over and no third party holding a token against your account. If the app is deleted, nothing about your bank goes with it, because nothing about your bank was ever collected.

The free tier is a working app, not a trial. Unlimited manual entries, wallets, budgets and reports, plus 25 automatic captures a month. Pro raises the capture limit and adds the deeper reporting. Nothing you already entered is taken away if you stop paying.

Masareef's answer

People in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE who get an SMS from their bank on every card swipe and want that to become a budget without any typing. Salaried professionals and students mostly, on Android, often juggling cash alongside one or two cards, and often thinking in more than one currency because they are paid in one and spend in another.

There is a second group outside the region: anyone whose bank sends transaction alerts and whose country the account linking services never got around to supporting.

Masareef's answer

Masareef fills in your spending by reading the transaction alerts your bank already sends you. Most trackers make you type every purchase in by hand, which is the reason people quit them in the second week. Masareef reads the SMS or notification, pulls out the amount, the merchant and the card, and files the expense for you.

The parsing runs entirely on your phone. No bank message is ever sent anywhere to be read, and no bank login, no account number and no card number is ever asked for. It works with 413 institutions today: 62 in Egypt, 16 in Saudi Arabia, 9 in the UAE, 88 across the wider Middle East and North Africa, 76 in Asia, 52 in Europe, 38 in the Americas, 24 in Africa, and 48 global banks, cards and wallets. On Android it reads the payment notification; on iPhone and iPad it reads the bank SMS, handed over by a Shortcut you set up once.

The rest is a full tracker rather than a novelty around the parser:

• Multiple wallets, cash included, with running balances
• Any currency as your home currency, with per-wallet stamping
• Budgets, recurring bills, debts and savings goals
• Trips, so a holiday can be tallied on its own
• Full Arabic with real right-to-left layout, not a mirrored English app
• Works offline, then syncs when you are back online

Masareef's answer

Masareef means "expenses" in Arabic.

It started from an annoyance. Every bank in Egypt already sends an SMS the moment a card is used, with the amount, the merchant and the last four digits in it. That is the whole expense, already written down, arriving on the phone. Yet every budgeting app on the store wanted the same figure typed in a second time by hand, or wanted a bank login through a service that does not support Egyptian banks anyway.

So the app reads the message instead. The hard part was never the idea, it was the coverage: every bank writes its alerts differently, in Arabic or English or a mix, and Android 15 began redacting notification content, which had to be worked around. That is where the 413 institution list came from, one bank format at a time.