Frequently Asked Questions

No. Meridian has no AI, machine learning or chatbot. Every figure comes from published rules, such as ATO tax rates, applied to your own data. Give it the same inputs and you get the same answer every time.

Your financial data is never sent to an AI provider or used to train a model.

Meridian uses authentication servers strictly to verify your identity and authorise your device access. The server only validates who you are (your verified email address and login session).

It never receives, stores, or processes your financial ledgers, bank transactions, account balances, or tax details. Your financial records reside exclusively in a local SQLite database protected by strong 256-bit encryption on your device. Even in the event of an authentication server breach, an attacker would find zero financial data because none exists on any server.

100% on your local machine. Meridian stores your data in an encrypted SQLite database on your local filesystem using strong 256-bit encryption.

Your encryption key is generated on your device and locked with your master password, with optional biometric quick-unlock (Touch ID on Mac) through your operating system's secure keychain. Meridian Labs, hosting providers, and third-party advertisers have zero access, and no financial telemetry is ever recorded or transmitted.

Web applications inherently require streaming your transaction history and account balances across the internet into a remote database, creating a centralised target for data breaches and subpoena requests.

A native desktop app guarantees complete data sovereignty, zero-latency local computation, full offline functionality (such as on flights or during outages), and on-device cryptographic isolation on your personal computer.

Never. Meridian never asks for, touches, or stores your internet banking usernames, passwords, or two-factor authentication codes.

We strictly reject “screen scraping” (which violates bank terms of service and requires credential disclosure). You import data either via offline drag-and-drop bank CSV exports or through statutory Australian Open Banking (CDR) where authentication occurs directly on your bank’s official portal.

Open Banking operates under the statutory Australian Consumer Data Right (CDR) regulated by the ACCC and OAIC. When you link an account, you authenticate directly on your bank’s own official portal, so Meridian never sees your password.

Your bank shares read-only data with Fiskil, our accredited CDR partner. Fiskil passes it through Meridian’s relay in Sydney to the app on your device. The relay holds data in memory only for the length of the request and never writes it to a database or disk.

Yes. Meridian features a native multi-user Household engine designed specifically for modern Australian couples and families.

You can configure individual accounts for each partner, track joint offset accounts and shared household expenses, and model your combined tax, savings rate, and long-term wealth trajectory together.

Your financial data is stored only on your device, in an encrypted database that only you can unlock.

Meridian’s own cloud services (sign-in, subscription status and the bank-feed relay) run in Sydney. Payments are handled by Stripe, which never sees your financial data.

Yes. You retain sovereign ownership over your data with zero proprietary lock-in.

You can export reports and your ATO tax pack to CSV, and download a full backup of your database file, whenever you want. Because your database is stored locally on your machine, your financial records always remain in your possession.

Meridian supports multi-device portability through user-owned storage rather than vendor cloud servers.

In the current beta, you can generate encrypted database backups and store them in your personal iCloud Drive, Google Drive, or encrypted external drive to restore seamlessly on another authorised device. Automated snapshot sync to your personal cloud folder is in active development and scheduled for general release.

Unlike US-centric personal finance apps built for 401(k)s and IRS rules, Meridian has Australian statutory frameworks hardcoded directly into its local engine:

2026–27 ATO income tax rates, the Medicare levy and Medicare Levy Surcharge (MLS) thresholds, HECS-HELP repayments and indexation, the 12% Super Guarantee and concessional caps, and mortgage offset calculators compared against ASX ETF investing (VAS/VGS).

Meridian is a desktop app. The private beta is available now for Macs with Apple silicon.

Windows 11 desktop support is actively in development and scheduled for general availability.

Meridian is free during the beta and becomes a paid subscription at launch. You are the customer: it is funded by the people who use it, not by advertising or by selling data, and your financial data never leaves your device.

The subscription pays for work you would otherwise do yourself. Every financial year we update the tax rates, Medicare and HECS thresholds and super caps, and check them against the ATO. We also keep the Open Banking connection and the bank statement imports working as banks change their systems. That saves you the hours of maintaining a spreadsheet, and the mistakes that come with it.