For the last decade, personal finance tools have presented users with a fundamental compromise: to gain clarity, you had to surrender control of your most sensitive data. The architecture of the Open Banking era centralised your information on third-party servers, creating a deep misalignment between user interests and business models. Pointo is built on a different premise. It represents a new class of application, made possible by a strategic shift in the platform layer. One where absolute data sovereignty is not a feature, but the foundation upon which a compelling user experience is built.
The Strategic Shift: From Cloud Aggregation to On-Device Intelligence
The first wave of FinTech was defined by aggregation in the cloud. The value proposition was to consolidate all your data into one centralised location - their platform. This was a necessary, but flawed, initial step.
The paradigm shifts when the platform itself - in this case, Apple - absorbs and commoditises the complexity of secure data access. Apple's FinanceKit is not merely a new API; it's a strategic move that relocates the centre of gravity for personal financial data from third-party servers directly to the user's device. Pointo is designed to be the canonical implementation of this new model.
A Unified, Sovereign Ledger
By leveraging FinanceKit, Pointo establishes a secure, local connection to your institutions. The result is a complete financial picture that exists only on your device. This architecture eliminates the systemic risk and privacy erosion of central data aggregation.
Intelligence at the Edge
All transaction analysis, merchant categorisation, and goal tracking happen on-device. This is not just a privacy benefit; it is a performance and experience benefit. The feedback loop between your spending and your insights is instant, unmediated by network latency or server-side processing.
Value Unlocked, Not Extracted
Tracking rewards like cashback and airline vouchers becomes a simple computational task on the data you already hold. The application's purpose is to maximise value for you, rather than to perform a complex data-mining operation for its benefit.
Our Thesis: Alignment as the Ultimate Moat
We have known each other for over 15 years, and have worked together at three different companies, including one at the forefront of Open Banking - TrueLayer. We saw its immense potential, but we also had a front-row seat to its foundational trade-offs. The dominant business model of the last decade created a constant, structural tension between serving the user and monetising the user's data.
Our thesis is that the next generation of defining software will be built on perfect alignment with the user. In the realm of personal finance, that alignment is only truly possible when the user has absolute control.
This is why we are obsessive about native iOS development. Our choice of SwiftUI is not an implementation detail; it is the manifestation of our thesis. We are not building a web view in a native container. We are building an application that is fundamentally of the platform, leveraging the security, performance, and privacy primitives that Apple provides as its core architecture.
This deep integration, born from decades of combined experience, is our moat: an experience so seamless and a foundation of trust so absolute that it cannot be replicated by those adhering to the old, server-centric model. We built the tool we always wanted - one that is powerful precisely because it is private.
Privacy is Not a Policy. It's Architecture.
Let us be unequivocal.
We cannot see your financial data by design. It is architecturally impossible.
Pointo's entire structure is predicated on the on-device security model of FinanceKit. The application creates a secure, sandboxed tunnel between your iPhone and your financial institution.
Your data never leaves your device.
This is not a privacy policy that can be amended in the future. It is the physical and logical architecture of the software.
Consequently, our business model is, by necessity, transparent and honest. Our success is directly tied to building a tool so valuable that you choose to support it. Our interests are, and will always be, completely aligned with yours.