What happens to a receipt photo you scan in Linaw

A receipt carries more than a total: the store, the time, sometimes the last digits of a card. Before you photograph one for an app, it's fair to ask where the photo goes. Here's the whole path in Linaw, step by step.

1. On your phone: is this a receipt?

On Home, tap + → Scan receipt and take a photo or choose one from your library. Before anything is sent, Linaw checks on your iPhone that the photo actually looks like a receipt. A photo of something else stops there and never leaves the phone, and it doesn't use up a scan.

Scanning needs Sign in with Apple, so the server can count your free scans and never charge the same scan twice. You can hide your email with Apple's private relay. Linaw never sees your Apple ID password.

2. In transit: smaller, then encrypted

Linaw shrinks the photo to the size needed to read it and sends it over an encrypted connection to our server, which is hosted in Singapore. Linaw doesn't keep a copy: a photo taken in the app isn't saved to your library, and one you chose from your library stays there as it was.

3. On the server: read once, then deleted

The server passes the photo to the service that reads it. The privacy policy names every service that touches your data. That service picks out three things: the total, the merchant and the date.

Then the photo is deleted within 60 seconds of being read. If your connection drops before the photo can be read, a cleanup job sweeps up any leftover photo within about ten minutes. No photo is kept long-term, on any plan.

What the server keeps is a random scan number for one day, with whether the scan was paid by a free scan or credits. That's how a scan retried after a lost connection is never charged twice. Nothing read from the receipt is stored with it.

4. Back on your phone: you approve it

The total, merchant and date come back as a draft. You check it, fix anything, and save. The saved transaction lives on your iPhone and, if you've turned on iCloud sync, in your own private iCloud. It never sits on our server.

What it costs

• Free: 5 receipt scans a month, with Sign in with Apple.
• Linaw Pro: up to 120 a month.
• Out of scans? A US$0.99 top-up adds credits on any plan.

If a scan fails on our side, it isn't counted. If you tap Cancel while it's reading, Linaw stops waiting, but a scan that still finishes in the background does count.

The short version

The photo is checked on your phone, sent encrypted, read once for the total, merchant and date, and deleted within 60 seconds. The transaction stays with you. Voice and typed logs never send a photo at all.