App guides
You tap your phone at the checkout and forget about it. A Shortcuts automation can write that purchase into your expense tracker a few seconds later, if you set it up once per card.
Card payments are the easiest expenses to forget. You tap your iPhone at the checkout, the terminal beeps, and by evening the coffee, the pharmacy and the parking are gone from memory. You can log Apple Pay transactions automatically with a Shortcuts automation that uses the Wallet trigger: the purchase goes to your expense tracker a few seconds after the tap, without opening anything.
This guide covers the setup step by step, using MoneyFlux’s “Log contactless purchase” action as the example, and the limits that every Wallet-based expense tracker shares. The limits matter more than the setup, so read them before you rely on it.
Since iOS 17, the Shortcuts app has a personal automation that fires when you pay with a card in Apple Wallet. On recent iOS versions it is listed as Wallet; some versions and guides call it Transaction. It is the same trigger.
When it fires, the trigger hands the automation a small set of values, available as Shortcut Input:
That is all. There is no date, no currency code, and no category. You can filter the trigger by merchant category when you set it up, but the category is not passed along to the action.
Expense apps cannot read Wallet transactions themselves. The automation is the bridge: you build it in Shortcuts, Shortcuts receives the payment details, and the app only supplies an action that saves them. This is also why the automation is per card. You choose the card in Shortcuts, so that is where you choose the account too.
If you are new to MoneyFlux, it is worth adding your cards as accounts first. The Apple Pay logging overview on the Features page shows where it fits with everything else.
In MoneyFlux, go to Settings → Apple Pay purchases. The page lists the same steps as below and has an Open Shortcuts button. On iOS menus, wording can shift slightly between versions; the steps below match iOS 26.
If the automation is set to ask before running, iOS shows a notification instead of running it. Miss the notification and the purchase is not logged. Run Immediately lets it work in the background while your phone goes back into your pocket.
The automation is the only place that knows which card was used and which account it belongs to. Wallet sends a card name, and two cards can share the same name, so MoneyFlux does not guess. Each automation names its account and every purchase goes exactly where you said. It takes a bit longer to set up, but nothing gets routed by a rule you never saw.
If you are tired of answering the category question, you can preset it. In step 2, tick only one category (say, Groceries) instead of all of them, and in step 5 set Category to the matching MoneyFlux category. Then make another automation for the same card with a different category. It is more automations, but purchases arrive fully categorized. Skip the question when it does appear and the purchase is saved under Other.
A few seconds after the tap:
You can pick a default account in Settings → Apple Pay purchases. It only matters for an automation where Account was left empty. The purchase is saved there, tagged #checkaccount, and MoneyFlux asks where it belongs. Answer and it moves; skip it and you can find it later by the tag. If there is no Account in the automation and no default either, nothing is saved, and the app tells you why.
These come from how the Wallet trigger works, not from any one app. Every expense tracker that uses this automation runs into them.
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| In-store tap with Apple Pay | Logged |
| Online or in-app Apple Pay purchase | Not triggered; add it by hand or from a statement |
| Plastic card, card number typed online, cash | Not triggered |
| Issuer notification arrives late | The tap can be missed |
| Payment declined at the terminal | It can still be logged; delete it if it did not go through |
| Purchase in a currency other than the account’s | Not saved; add it by hand once the bank posts it |
The trigger fires for contactless payments in a physical store. Apple Pay inside apps and on websites does not fire it. Subscriptions billed to your card do not either; for those, tracking subscriptions and recurring payments is a better fit.
Because Wallet sends no date, the date saved is the moment the action ran, which is normally seconds after the tap. Because it sends no currency code, MoneyFlux reads the currency from the amount text. MoneyFlux never converts currencies, so if the amount is in a different currency from the account, the purchase is refused rather than saved at the wrong value. One quirk: a bare “$” is read as the dollar your phone’s region uses, so an iPhone set to Canada treats it as CAD. If you hold accounts in several currencies, our guide to a multi-currency expense tracker explains why there is no conversion.
Developers have reported on Apple’s forums since iOS 18 that the trigger can time out when the card issuer’s transaction reaches Wallet late. When that happens the automation does not run and there is nothing an app can do about it.
The practical answer: treat Apple Pay logging as a convenience that catches most everyday purchases, not as your record of truth.
Before blaming the trigger, rule out the setup. Most “it never works” cases come down to one of these:
If all five check out and an occasional tap is still missing, it is most likely the late-notification case above, and the statement import will catch it.
Your bank statement is the record that does not miss anything. Once a month, export it from your bank and import the bank statement into MoneyFlux. That fills in online purchases, missed taps and anything paid by other means.
Expect some overlap: a purchase logged by the automation can appear again from the statement. Search for #applepay on the days in question and delete one of each pair. The first import is free; after that, imports are part of Premium. The Apple Pay action itself is free.
Try it in MoneyFlux: open Settings → Apple Pay purchases, tap Open Shortcuts, and build one automation for the card you use most. Pay for something small, and check that it appears on the right account tagged #applepay before adding the rest of your cards.
If most of your spending is tapping an iPhone in shops, yes. Ten minutes of setup per card removes the most common reason an expense log falls behind: small purchases nobody remembers by evening. If you mostly shop online, the automation will catch little, and a monthly statement import is the better habit. Most people end up with both, and the combination is what makes a month’s numbers trustworthy enough to answer where your money goes every month.
Not directly. Apps cannot read Wallet transactions on their own. The supported route is a Shortcuts automation you build yourself, which passes each in-store payment to the app's action.
No. The Wallet trigger fires only for in-store contactless payments. Purchases made online or inside apps have to be added by hand or picked up from a bank statement import.
The trigger depends on Wallet receiving the transaction from your card issuer. If that arrives late, the automation can time out and the tap is missed. Check that the automation is set to run immediately, and fill gaps from your statement.
No. The Log contactless purchase action is free. It works on iPhone, since iPad has no in-store Apple Pay.
MoneyFlux does not convert currencies, so a purchase in a currency other than the account's is not saved. Add it by hand once your bank posts the amount in your account's currency.
