1. What Pay Alert Does
Pay Alert watches for payment SMS from the bank and mobile-money accounts you register for your companies. When a message confirms that money was received on one of those accounts, Pay Alert delivers the payment to the Pay Alert service (API). If the API can't be reached or doesn't confirm it, Pay Alert automatically sends a short payment alert by SMS to your company's available employees instead. Every other SMS on your device is ignored.
2. Your Pay Alert Account
Sign up with your full name, phone number, and a password, and sign in with your phone number and password.
Your password is sent only over an encrypted connection and is never saved on your device. After you sign in, the app keeps a session token in its private storage so you stay signed in.
You can edit your profile and change your password from the Account page.
Forgot password: the one-time code (OTP) for resetting your password is shown in a notification on this device. Tapping the notification copies the code so you can paste it in.
Signing out, or an expired session, removes your session, cached company data, and today's forward history from this device.
3. Companies, Employees & Accounts
Companies: you create and name the companies you manage, and can rename or delete them.
Employees: for each company you add the people who should receive alerts, with a name and phone number. "Import" opens your device's own contact picker and returns only the one contact you choose; Pay Alert never reads your contact list. You can mark an employee unavailable to pause their alerts.
Accounts: for each company you add the payment accounts to watch, choosing the gateway (bank or mobile-money sender) from the Quick Add list and entering the account number. Accounts can be paused or removed.
Your companies, employees, and accounts are saved to your Pay Alert account so they are available when you sign in. Employee availability and account pause settings are kept on this device only.
4. How Payment Messages Are Detected
- Only SMS from a sender ID that exactly matches one of your registered gateways are checked. Look-alike sender IDs are ignored.
- Each message is read using that gateway's own message format, which the app downloads from the Pay Alert service and refreshes about once a day.
- Only credits (money received) are forwarded. Debits, payments, withdrawals, charges, transfers, refunds, and other notices are never forwarded.
- The account digits shown in the message must match an account you registered for that gateway; otherwise the message is ignored.
All of this checking happens on your device. Messages that don't qualify are not stored, forwarded, or uploaded.
5. How Alerts Are Delivered
Primary channel – API: each qualifying payment message is sent to the Pay Alert service over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection, with the account number removed. Network errors and temporary server errors are retried for up to about half a minute.
Fallback channel – SMS: if the API can't be used or doesn't confirm the payment for any reason (no internet connection, server error, expired session, or the account number couldn't be removed from the message), Pay Alert builds a short alert containing the gateway, amount, payer name, and receipt link (when the bank's message includes them) and sends it from your phone's SIM to each available employee. The original message and the account number are not included in it. Your mobile operator's standard SMS charges apply to fallback alerts.
Because the fallback is triggered whenever the API does not confirm receipt, in rare cases (for example, a timeout after the service has already received the message) a payment may reach both the Pay Alert service and your employees.
You are notified if a payment reaches neither channel.
6. Broadcast Controls
Master Broadcasting turns forwarding on or off for all companies at once.
Each company also has its own forwarding switch. Every company uses the same delivery route: API first, SMS to employees as the fallback.
Off days pause all forwarding on chosen weekdays (for example, every Sunday) or on specific dates, based on your device's date.
Broadcast and off-day settings are stored on this device only.
7. Dashboard & Forward History
The Dashboard shows your employee and account counts, the number of alerts forwarded today, whether monitoring is active, and any issue that could stop alerts from working.
Forward History lists today's alerts with their gateway, amount, time, company, delivery channel (API or SMS fallback), delivery status, and the alert details, with filters by status, gateway, and amount. It never contains the original SMS or an account number.
History and the daily count are kept on this device only. History is cleared at the start of each day and when you sign out.
For SMS fallback alerts, delivery status comes from your mobile operator's sent and delivery reports. To learn which employee numbers return delivery reports, the app stores only a one-way (SHA-256) fingerprint of each number, never the number itself.
8. Notifications
Pay Alert shows an ongoing notification while monitoring is on, and alerts you whenever a payment message couldn't be read, forwarded, or delivered, so a failure is never silent. It also uses a notification to show your password-reset code.
9. Background Operation
To catch payment SMS at any time, Pay Alert runs a foreground service while monitoring is on, and must be excluded from Android's battery optimization. It also runs short background tasks to deliver payments to the API (and fall back to SMS if that fails), confirm SMS delivery, and refresh gateway message formats about once a day.
10. Information We Collect
Stored with your Pay Alert account on the Pay Alert service:
- Your full name, phone number, and password (used to verify your sign-in)
- Your companies, their employees' names and phone numbers, and the accounts (gateway and account number) you register
- Qualifying payment messages, with the account number removed, delivered through the API
Stored on this device only:
- Your session token and a cached copy of your company setup
- Today's forward history and forwarded count
- Employee availability, account pause, broadcast, and off-day settings
- Your language choice and a record of when you accepted this policy
Pay Alert does not collect your balances, statements, contact list, location, or any SMS other than qualifying payment messages.
11. Permissions This App Requires
- SMS (receive and send): to detect payment SMS from your registered gateways and to send fallback alerts to employees when the API can't deliver a payment. Pay Alert cannot read your existing inbox.
- Notifications: for the monitoring status, failure alerts, and password-reset codes.
- Foreground service: to keep monitoring running while the app is in the background.
- Unrestricted battery use: so Android doesn't pause monitoring.
- Internet and network state: to sign in, sync your companies, employees, and accounts, download gateway formats, and deliver payments to the API – and to detect when there is no connection, so the SMS fallback is used without delay.
Pay Alert does not request access to your contacts, location, camera, files, or phone identity.
12. How We Use and Share Information
Information is used only to operate Pay Alert: signing you in, keeping your setup in sync, detecting and delivering payment alerts, and reporting their status. Payments delivered through the API go only to the Pay Alert service, and fallback SMS alerts go only to the employees you add. We do not sell your information or use it for advertising, and we share it only with service providers needed to run Pay Alert (such as our hosting provider) or where required by law.
13. Security
All communication with the Pay Alert service uses encrypted HTTPS, and every request after sign-in is authorized with your session token.
Data on your device is kept in Pay Alert's private app storage, which other apps cannot access.
Account numbers are never included in API deliveries, fallback SMS alerts, forward history, or app logs. If the account number can't be removed from a message, that message is not sent to the API.
App logs never contain message content, names, phone numbers, account digits, passwords, codes, or tokens.
Only exact sender IDs are trusted, so a message from a look-alike sender cannot trigger an alert.
Keep your phone locked and your password private. If you think your account has been misused, change your password and contact support.
14. Terms of Use
By using Pay Alert you agree to:
- Register only accounts that you own or are authorized to monitor.
- Add only employees who have agreed to receive payment alerts on their phones.
- Keep your account details accurate and your password confidential.
- Use Pay Alert only for lawful business purposes, and not misuse, copy, or interfere with the app or service.
- Pay any SMS or data charges from your mobile operator.
15. Service Limitations
Pay Alert depends on your phone staying on, your internet connection, your SIM, network coverage, SMS balance (for fallback alerts), and each bank's message format, so alerts can be delayed, fail, or be missed. A Pay Alert alert is a convenience notice, not proof of payment. Always confirm a transaction through your bank's or provider's official channels before releasing goods or services.
16. Data Retention & Deletion
Your account data is kept while your account is active.
Deleting a company, employee, or account removes it from your setup.
On-device forward history is removed each day and when you sign out. Uninstalling the app removes all data stored on this device.
You can request deletion of your account and all associated data at any time through your organization administrator or Pay Alert support. Once confirmed, it is removed from our systems except where retention is required by law or regulation.
17. Your Rights & Choices
- Review and change the app's permissions from Account > Security & Privacy or your device settings.
- Turn forwarding off for all companies, for one company, or on off days from the Broadcast page.
- Pause or remove individual employees and accounts.
- Update your profile or password from the Account page.
- Switch the app language between English and Amharic from the Account page.
18. Changes to This Policy
This policy may be updated to reflect changes in the app or applicable regulations, and the version number above changes when it is. Continued use of Pay Alert after an update means you accept the revised policy.
19. Contact
Questions, requests, or concerns about this policy or your data can be sent to your organization administrator or Pay Alert support.