EKKO and your bank

Find out more about Akahu

Akahu is Aotearoa New Zealand’s open finance platform. It is a secure bridge between apps like EKKO and your bank. EKKO connects through Akahu’s Enduring Connectivity, a read-only connection. EKKO’s own formal accreditation path - including whether it involves Aotearoa New Zealand’s Consumer Data Right (CDR) framework - is still being finalised and is not yet settled.

When you connect your bank, you never give your login to EKKO. Akahu shows you a secure sign-in page from your own bank, and you sign in there. EKKO never sees your username, password or any other login detail.

EKKO uses Akahu’s Enduring Connectivity, the service built for personal-finance apps. It lets EKKO read your account balances and your transaction history. EKKO does not start transfers or move money of any kind.

EKKO does not use Akahu Apply, a separate service for lenders (affordability checks and credit scoring). EKKO is not a lender and never checks you for credit.

Akahu does not calculate anything for EKKO. Your weekly savings target is not worked out from your bank at all: you choose the amount yourself when you start a game, and nothing EKKO reads from your bank changes it.

This is ongoing access, not a one-off look. Once you connect, EKKO can keep reading the balances and transactions listed below for as long as the connection stays open. It does not run out on its own, and it keeps working between games.

Five things end it:

• Disconnecting it yourself, at any time, from Your bank in the app or directly with your bank.
• Being on the Free plan once its 12 weeks of bank connection are up. EKKO emails you about a week before, never less than six days, and waits for any game you are playing to finish first.
• Your Plus plan ending, once your free weeks are up, whether you cancel it or a payment doesn’t go through. If no game is running, the connection ends straight away. If one is, it ends after that game, the same way as on Free.
• Deleting your EKKO account. An account a game was checked against stays as a blank entry, with no name.
• Your bank switching it off. EKKO tells you in the app when that happens.

EKKO can see

• Your account names and types, like “Kiwibank Savings”, and the name of the bank each one is with.
• Your account balances - updated whenever your bank sends new figures, usually once a day, and read when you open Home, Budget or Your bank, once a day for the reminder email, and at each weekly check. When you open Budget, EKKO asks your bank for new figures first.
• Your transactions, including shop names like “BP” or “Pak’nSave”, the amount, the date and the category. EKKO can read them through Akahu. Home shows you totals made from them - money in and out each month, and where your money went in a month you pick, by kind and by shop: each shop’s name and logo, how many times you paid there and the total. Money you sent to people shows by the words you typed when you paid. The Budget page shows your next payday, who your regular pay comes from and about how much it is, the bills and subscriptions due before it or on the day and what is left until then, and your subscriptions, with what each costs a month and the business’s logo. It counts payments your bank and Akahu have named as a bill or a subscription, like a direct debit or a gym, and payments that repeat that they haven’t named, on a line of their own that you can remove. It does not ask you about any payment. It also shows your last four weeks as money in and out a week, by kind and by shop, and the loan repayments your bank shows, with what is left on any loan or card account you connected. No screen lists your transactions one by one (a shop or person you paid only once shows that one amount, with no date), except the one-page budget you can download from the Budget page: when you press the button, EKKO reads every payment in your connected accounts over the last 30 days and sends them to your phone, which makes the page. EKKO does not keep it or send it anywhere else. The totals and the lists are worked out each time you look and are not saved. EKKO holds what it reads from your bank in the server’s memory, not its database, usually for no more than an hour. Home also shows each of your accounts on its own tab, by the name your bank gives it, with its balance and its own money in and out. Loans and credit cards are not shown there. The weekly check uses them for one thing: money that moves in or out of your savings account after 5:30pm does not count for that week, so EKKO reads those transactions to leave that money out. None of it sets your savings target.
• Whether your Akahu connection is switched on or not.

EKKO cannot see

• Your bank login - ever.
• Card numbers, PINs or CVV codes.
• Your account numbers, or the name and address your bank holds for you. EKKO does not ask Akahu for them.
• Accounts you have not chosen to link.
• Anything from banks or accounts you have not connected.

• The weekly check. Once a week at 5:30pm Aotearoa time, EKKO reads the balance of the one savings account your game watches and compares it to your line. It also reads that account’s transactions, so money that moves in or out after 5:30pm does not count for that week. Your result shows in the app.
• Home. Your balances, your money in and out each month, where your money went in a month you pick, by kind and by shop, the money you sent to people, each account on its own tab, and your savings line, which is drawn from one bank total a week.
• Budget. Your next payday and who your pay comes from, the bills and subscriptions due before it, what is left until then, your money in and out a week, your subscriptions each month, the loan repayments your bank shows, and your one-page budget with the last 30 days of payments when you ask for it. EKKO shows the numbers; it never moves your money.
• A reminder email before a check, with your savings balance and how much is left to reach your line.
• Your Discipline number, on Home, is worked out from the weeks you hit, missed or were not checked, and what you saved in each week you hit, counted only up to the Beginner weekly amount. It never uses how much money you have in your bank.

EKKO can

• Read the balances of the bank accounts you connect.
• Read your transactions through Akahu, for the things in section 5.

EKKO cannot

• Move money from your bank account.
• Read any account you have not linked.
• Store or share your bank login.
• Do anything you have not agreed to. The weekly check and the daily reads run on their own, because you agreed to them when you connected.

You can disconnect at any time, and it happens straight away:

1. Sign in at ekko.nz and open Your bank.
2. Press Disconnect bank.
3. Confirm. Your connection ends immediately.

You can also end it directly with Akahu at my.akahu.nz.

The record of each weekly check (your balance at the time, your line, and the result) is kept for at least 7 years from the day of each check, so any result can be questioned and checked.

That record holds the balance on the day of each check only - not ongoing live data. Disconnecting stops every future read.

About your data or your bank connection with EKKO: chow@ekko.nz

About how Akahu handles your data: hello@akahu.nz, or read Akahu’s privacy notice.