A stable currency at home makes it easy to forget that the money leaving for Manila, Lahore, Cairo or Kochi is exposed to a rate that moves every week. Here is what actually decides whether a tracker works in Riyadh, Jeddah or Dammam.
In short
In Saudi Arabia the decisive feature in a personal finance app is whether it can turn the SMS alerts your bank already sends into transactions, because third-party bank connections of the kind common in the US and UK are not broadly available for personal finance apps here. After that: correct SAR handling, real multi-currency for money sent to family abroad, and no requirement to hand over online banking credentials. NetWorth+ is a free Android app built around exactly those. It reads bank sender messages on the device with your permission, never asks for a bank login, keeps the exchange rate that applied on the day of each transfer, and counts shared money in your net worth. There is no iOS version yet.
Decides it
SMS capture, not bank sync
Currency
SAR plus your home currency
Peg
Stable at home, not abroad
Checked
August 2026
The local constraint
The riyal's stability against the dollar is genuinely useful. It also makes the volatility on the other side easier to ignore than it should be.
If you are paid in riyals and spend in riyals, the exchange rate is invisible. The moment part of that salary leaves for another country, it stops being invisible — and the rate you got in January, June and November were three different rates producing three different amounts from the same transfer.
Most trackers handle this by converting everything to one display currency at today's rate, which quietly rewrites your history every time the market moves. What you sent last spring appears to change size, and any attempt to work out whether your transfer timing helps or hurts becomes impossible.
The checklist
| Criterion | Why it matters here | NetWorth+ |
|---|---|---|
| Reads bank alert SMS | The most reliable automation available | Yes, on device, you approve each one |
| Works without a bank login | Third-party bank access is limited | Never asks for one |
| SAR plus a second currency | Salary here, family elsewhere | Yes, rate recorded per transaction |
| Historical rates kept | Otherwise past transfers change size | Frozen on the day, never restated |
| Transfers separated from spending | Remittances are not expenses | Recorded as transfers |
| Annual rent and school fees | Costs arrive in lumps, not monthly | Scheduled on their real dates |
| Ad-free | Finance apps monetise attention or data | No ads, no advertising SDKs |
| Arabic interface | Obvious, and worth stating plainly | Not available — English only today |
| iOS version | A large share of the market | Not yet — Android only |
Last checked August 2026. Two honest gaps are listed above rather than buried: there is no Arabic interface and no iPhone app at present.
Honest positioning
NetWorth+ is in English today. The interface leans on numbers, icons and short labels rather than long passages of text, but that is a mitigation and not a substitute, and it would be dishonest to present it as one.
Android only for now. The planned iOS version will not include SMS capture, because iOS gives no app access to the message inbox — that is a platform rule, not a choice.
This tracks what you hold and what it is worth. It is not a brokerage, does not price your portfolio live, and gives no investment advice.
No personal finance app needs your online banking password, your card PIN or your CVV. NetWorth+ asks for none of them because it does not connect to banks at all. The only permission it requests is optional access to bank-sender SMS on your own device — messages from personal numbers are skipped before anything is read, the text is processed on the phone and is not uploaded, and you can withdraw the permission whenever you like.
Where this applies
Written from Saudi Arabia outwards — Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Al Khobar, Mecca, Medina, Jubail and Yanbu — and the same reasoning holds across the Gulf, where bank SMS alerts are universal and third-party bank access is not.
NetWorth+ also covers India, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, the United Kingdom and the United States. Currency handling is not limited to the list above — three-decimal dinars and zero-decimal currencies are treated correctly rather than being forced into two decimal places.
Questions
Keep reading
Riyal alerts, a pegged currency, and family in another country.
Read moreThe same checklist with dirham and tenancy specifics.
Read moreThe wider category, and what refusing to connect costs you.
Read moreThe rate you actually got, kept.
Read moreCash that is not yours, and costs that are.
Read moreThree-decimal dinars, read correctly.
Read moreBoth sides counted, each at the rate that actually applied, without a bank login.
Android. No bank login. No ads. Message reading is optional and off until you switch it on.