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Walnut alternatives: the app you remember is now part of a lending brand

Walnut was one of the first Indian apps to read bank SMS and turn it into a spending log, and a lot of people still search for it by name. It was acquired by Capital Float for about $30 million — roughly ₹209 crore — and in July 2022 Capital Float unified pay later, personal credit and money management under a single brand called axio. The expense tracking survives inside that. The company around it is now, primarily, a lender.

The short answer

Walnut still exists, technically: the Google Play listing is titled axio: Income & Expense Tracker and its package name is still com.daamitt.walnut.app, which is the original Walnut app ID. What changed is the surrounding business. axio is the brand of CapFloat Financial Services Private Limited, an NBFC registered with the RBI, and it leads with credit and pay-later products. If you liked Walnut because it just tracked your spending and asked nothing of you, that is the part that has changed most.

The chain of events

Capital Float acquired Walnut — built by Pune-based Thumbworks Technologies — in a deal reported at $30 million, around ₹209 crore. In July 2022 Capital Float brought its three consumer products together under the axio name: pay later, personal credit, and money management. The money management piece is the descendant of Walnut, which is why the Android package identifier never changed.

None of that makes axio a bad product. Expense tracking, budgeting and bill reminders are still there, and the SMS-parsing engine that made Walnut good at capture is the same lineage. It is a factual description of what the app is attached to now, which is a different thing from what it was attached to in 2018.

Why the ownership matters more than it sounds

An expense tracker sees your salary, your EMIs, your spending patterns and your account balances. When the company holding that view is also an RBI-registered NBFC offering personal credit and pay-later, the product has a commercial reason to be interested in your borrowing capacity. That is not an accusation of anything; it is the shape of the incentive, and it is reasonable to want to know it before handing over inbox access.

This is the argument the homepage makes generally: a free finance app still has to make money, and the three usual answers are lending, distribution commissions, and advertising. Knowing which one applies tells you what the product is optimising for when it decides what to show you. It is why TLDR Money is a subscription — not because subscriptions are virtuous, but because it makes the answer boring.

What we are not claiming

We have not audited axio’s current features, pricing or data practices, and nothing here should be read as a comparison of them. The acquisition, the rebrand and the package identifier are matters of public record. Anything about how the app behaves today, you should check on the app’s own listing.

What to actually check when replacing it

Where the transactions come from. Walnut’s capture was SMS-based, which is why it worked so well on Android and why the category as a whole is Android-first. Apple does not allow third-party apps to read the SMS inbox at all. If you have moved to an iPhone since you last used Walnut, this is the whole question, and the iPhone page covers what remains possible.

What the app asks for. SMS inbox access on Android is a broad permission — it does not distinguish bank alerts from everything else in there. Google restricts it precisely because of that, and an app needs either to be your default SMS handler or to hold an approved declaration. Whether that trade is worth making is a real question rather than a rhetorical one, and it is worked through on the SMS permission page.

How the company earns. Lending, commission, ads or subscription. Each produces a different product over time.

Where TLDR Money sits

TLDR Money parses the transaction alerts and statements your bank emails you. That source is identical on iOS and Android, needs no SMS permission and no net-banking credentials, and it is the same mechanism whichever phone you switch to next. There is no lending arm, no fund distribution and no advertising, because the product is paid for by subscription.

What axio does better: it has years of SMS parsing behind it and a much larger install base, and on Android SMS capture is genuinely fast and comprehensive. If you are on Android and the permission does not bother you, that is a real advantage and worth saying plainly.

Questions worth asking

What happened to the Walnut app?

Walnut was acquired by Capital Float in a deal reported at about $30 million, roughly ₹209 crore. In July 2022 Capital Float unified its pay later, personal credit and money management products under the axio brand. The expense tracker continues inside axio — the Google Play package identifier is still com.daamitt.walnut.app.

Is Walnut the same as axio?

The app is the descendant of Walnut, now listed as axio: Income & Expense Tracker. axio is the brand of CapFloat Financial Services Private Limited, an NBFC registered with the RBI, which also offers pay later and personal credit. The tracking survives; the surrounding business is now credit-led.

Does Walnut work on iPhone?

Walnut’s capture was built on reading bank SMS, and Apple does not permit third-party apps to read the SMS inbox. Any iOS version of an SMS-based Indian tracker is therefore working from a different source than its Android counterpart. Check the app’s own iOS listing for what it actually does on that platform.

Why does it matter that an expense tracker is owned by a lender?

An expense tracker sees your income, EMIs, balances and spending patterns — which is also exactly what a lender uses to assess borrowing capacity. That does not imply misuse, but it is a commercial incentive worth knowing about before granting inbox or SMS access, because it shapes what the product optimises for.

What is the closest alternative to the original Walnut?

For automatic capture on Android with no bank login, several SMS-based trackers occupy that space including axio itself. For the same automation on an iPhone, the capture has to come from email, notifications or statement import instead, since the SMS inbox is not available to apps on iOS.

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Tracking, from a company with nothing to sell you

No lending arm, no pay later, no fund distribution. TLDR Money is a subscription that reads the alerts already in your inbox, on whichever phone you use. That is the entire business model.

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Facts on this page verified 5 August 2026. Anything about another company changes without notice; if something here is out of date, tell us at [email protected] and it gets corrected.

Sources

This is an explanation, not advice about your money. TLDR Money is not a registered investment adviser and earns no commission on any product mentioned. Where another company is described, the description reflects publicly available information on the date above and may since have changed.