Buy Now Pay Later Stacking Tracker and Affordability Check Across Providers
Young shoppers in the Gulf, India and the UK often have several buy now pay later plans with different providers at once, and no single place shows the total due each month. Build a privacy-first mobile app that collects instalments from order emails, SMS or manual entry, shows a combined calendar of what is due, and runs an affordability check against the user's income and fixed costs before they take on another plan.
Beginner
Achievable by one student in a semester with familiar tools.1 semester · 1 to 2 students
7 to ship
4 optional extrasSuggested stack
What you should ship
- Manual entry of instalment plans: provider, amount, dates, late fee terms as the user reads them
- Optional on-device parsing of order confirmation emails or SMS that the user forwards or shares, with confirmation before saving
- A combined calendar and monthly total of all instalments due
- An affordability check that compares upcoming instalments with income and fixed costs the user enters
- A "before you buy" screen showing how a new plan changes the next three months
- Reminders before each due date
- A privacy design where data stays on the phone by default
If you have time left
- Parsing templates for more providers, tested on sample messages
- A spending reflection screen showing categories bought with instalments
- Arabic, Hindi or Urdu interface
- Encrypted backup to the user's own cloud storage
The problem: many small plans, one big monthly bill
Buy now pay later (BNPL) services let shoppers split a purchase into a few instalments, often without interest if paid on time. They have grown fast in the Gulf, India, the UK and elsewhere. Each plan looks small, but people often hold several at once with different providers and different due dates. Missed payments can mean late fees and, in some markets, damage to credit records. Regulators in the UK and other countries have moved to bring BNPL under consumer credit rules because of these risks.
No provider has an incentive to show you what you owe to its competitors.
What already exists and the gap
- Tabby and Tamara are major BNPL providers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE; Klarna is widespread in Europe and the US; Indian shoppers use services such as Simpl and LazyPay.
- Each provider's app shows its own plans and due dates.
- Budgeting apps track spending but often miss future instalments.
The gap is one private place for all instalments, with an honest affordability check before the next purchase.
Inspiration
Consumer protection research and regulators' reviews of BNPL, such as the UK's work on bringing these products under regulation, describe how stacking several plans leads to missed payments. Your project builds a simple tool that responds to that finding from the user's side.
What you build
- Shoppers see every instalment due this month and next, from all providers, and get a reminder before each one.
- Before buying, they check whether one more plan fits their budget.
- Financial educators can use it in money skills sessions.
The technically interesting part
- Parsing without spying. Read only messages the user explicitly shares, parse them on the phone and ask for confirmation. Never request blanket inbox access.
- Messy formats. Order emails and SMS change often. Write parsers that fail safely and fall back to manual entry.
- A meaningful check. Keep the affordability rule simple and explain it, for example instalments as a share of money left after fixed costs.
- Local-first data. Store everything on the phone, encrypted, with optional user-controlled backup.
How to evaluate it
- Parser accuracy on a test set of sample confirmation messages you create, including changed formats.
- Usability: time to add a plan and to answer "how much do I owe next month?"
- User study: whether participants with test data make different choices after seeing the combined view.
- Privacy review: what data leaves the phone (ideally nothing by default).
Suggested plan
- Weeks 1 to 3: research providers' public terms and design the data model.
- Weeks 4 to 7: manual entry, calendar and reminders.
- Weeks 8 to 10: parsing shared messages.
- Weeks 11 to 13: affordability check and "before you buy" screen.
- Weeks 14 to 15: user test, report and demo.
Path to a product
Banks, financial literacy NGOs and employers offering financial wellbeing benefits could distribute such a tool. It could also become a feature in a budgeting app. The project shows careful mobile engineering and privacy thinking.
Scope warning
Do not give financial advice or credit decisions; show numbers and let users decide. Do not log in to providers' accounts or scrape their apps. Use made-up data in demos.
Learn what you need on Sefism
- Mobile roadmap: local storage, notifications and app structure.
- Programming roadmap: parsing text robustly.
- Flutter documentation: building the app.
- OWASP Mobile Application Security: protecting data on the phone.
Get help with this idea
Parsing is fiddly and can eat the semester. Tauseef can help you keep it optional and focus on the views that help users most. If you are new here, create a free account first.
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