bunqAfford

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Inspiration

Buying stuff is easy. Knowing if you should buy it is hard.

We have all seen something we wanted — a laptop, camera, bike, watch, or car — and thought: “Can I actually afford this?”

Your bank balance gives you a number, but it does not give you advice.

A balance does not tell you if rent is coming up. It does not tell you if your spending has been too high this month. It does not tell you whether this purchase is smart, risky, or just badly timed.

That is why we built bunq Affordability Agent: a financial reality check from just one image.

What it does

bunq Affordability Agent helps users decide whether they can afford something before they buy it.

Just upload a picture of the item, and the agent takes care of:

Understanding what the item is
Estimating what kind of product the user wants to buy
Checking the bunq sandbox balance
Reading recent transaction history
Calculating affordability
Giving a clear buy / wait / save recommendation
Creating a simple saving plan
Warning against risky financial decisions

The experience is simple:

Take picture → AI understands the item → bunq data is analyzed → user gets a smart financial recommendation.

It is like having a rational friend inside your banking app.

Challenge: making finance feel simple

The hardest part was making the system feel simple while combining multiple complex steps behind the scenes.

The user only uploads one image, but the backend has to detect the product, understand what the user might want to buy, connect to bunq sandbox data, analyze transactions, estimate financial comfort, and generate advice that is clear and responsible.

We also had to avoid making the agent too binary. A purchase is not always just “affordable” or “not affordable.” Sometimes the user has enough money, but buying the item would leave them financially vulnerable. Sometimes they cannot afford it today, but they could afford it with a short saving plan.

So we designed the agent to give practical guidance instead of judgment.