One of the biggest limitations of Apple Card is its inability to integrate with budgeting services like Mint and YNAB. Apple does, however, offer the ability to download your transaction history as a PDF. An independent developer has now designed a tool that builds on Apple Card’s PDF export feature for more detailed budgeting.
As highlighted by CNBC, developer Jed Schmidt created the tool “csv.wtf” with the specific purpose of parsing the PDF statement generated by the Wallet app. You simply download your statement from the Wallet app on your iPhone, upload the PDF to csv.wtf, and you’ll generate a CSV file of your statement. It works on desktop and iPhone.
“I was surprised, having adopted Apple Card pretty early, that it didn’t exist,” Schmidt, a former developer in residence at Union Square Ventures, said in a phone interview. “It didn’t occur to me that in 2019, Goldman Sachs, Apple, and Mastercard would ship a product that has no way to export transactions. Pretty surprising.”
And, if you’re worried about privacy, Schmidt says that all of the processing is done directly in your browser, and nothing is uploaded to his servers:
“I don’t want to see your financial statements, I don’t want the liability, I don’t have them on a server, I don’t want to deal with any of that headache,” Schmidt said. “Your financial statements never leave your phone. Everything is done in the browser.”
There are a few different use cases for the CSV generated by Schmidt’s service. For one, some budgeting software, such as YNAB, allows you to manually import CSV files and tie those transactions into your budget. Furthermore, many people have their own budgeting solutions directly in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and Apple’s Numbers. Schmidt’s tool makes it easy to add your Apple Card data to those solutions.
If you want to try out csv.wtf, there’s a free version that removes one random transaction per month. You can upgrade to the full version of the app for $5. Why doesn’t Apple release some sort of tool like this on its own? As CNBC points out, Apple’s website says support for exporting Apple Card data “isn’t available yet,” so such a feature could be added sometime in 2020.
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