Slot Donation

Lend unused bank-connection slots to other Forbidden Finance users so they can connect their own banks. The lender's tier and data stay private; only connection slots cross between users.

Overview

Each Forbidden Finance subscription comes with a fixed number of bank-connection slots — Free has 0, Starter has 2, Pro has 5, Premium has 10 (plus optional add-on packs for Premium). If you are on Pro or Premium and you have unused slots, you can lend some of them to another Forbidden Finance user inside an active sharing grant. They use the lent slots to connect their own banks.

Slot donation is not tier sharing. The recipient does not gain any of your tier's features by receiving a slot — they get the ability to connect more banks, nothing else. Your account, your tier, and your data all stay exactly as they were.

What Slot Donation IS

A way to extend your unused bank-connection capacity to a partner, family member, or housemate.
A pure connection-count transfer. You give them headroom; they connect their own banks into that headroom.
One-way visibility by default — you, the lender, see nothing about the connections they make in those slots.

What Slot Donation is NOT

It is not "Premium for free." The recipient stays on whatever tier they own. If they are on Free, they remain on Free with the lent slots.
It is not data sharing. None of the recipient's bank, transactions, balances, or accounts are visible to you unless they explicitly share specific accounts back through the household sharing flow (a separate, opt-in step).
It is not pass-through. A recipient cannot re-lend slots to a third user. Only slots you own (from your tier or an add-on pack) can be lent.

How Lending Works (Donor side)

Set up a sharing grant first

Slot lending happens inside an active sharing grant. Invite the other user from Settings > Household if you have not already. They must accept before slots can flow.

Open Household and find the slots panel

The panel shows how many slots your tier provides, how many you are using for your own banks, and how many are free to lend.

Choose a recipient and a slot count

Tap Lend Slots, pick the household member, and enter how many slots to lend. The cap is your unused-and-unallocated total.

Confirm

The allocation is recorded immediately. The recipient can now connect that many additional banks.

How Receiving Works (Recipient side)

When a household member lends you slots, you see a notification and a new entry in Settings > Connected Banks showing how many slots are available — including which of those are lent (with the lender's name). You connect banks the normal way; the lent slots are consumed first if your own tier provides any.

The banks you connect into lent slots are yours. They live under your account. Sync, transactions, balance updates — all behave exactly as they would if you had bought the slots yourself. The lender does not see them.

If you want the lender (or another household member) to see specific accounts you have connected, use the regular Account Sharing flow on each account you want to share. Slot lending and account sharing are independent — having a lent slot does not implicitly share data either way.

This is a common flow: a partner lends you slots so you can connect a bank you wanted to track, and you choose to let them see your checking account from that bank but not your private brokerage account.

Open the bank you want to share from

Tap the connection in Settings > Connected Banks.

Toggle Share with household per account

Each account in that connection has its own share toggle. Flip the toggles only on accounts you want the household member to see.

Confirm sharing

The other user is notified the next time they open the app. They will see only the accounts you toggled on, with read-only access by default.

You can revoke account sharing at any time without affecting the slot lending.

Revocation, Grace Period, and Connection Selection

Either party can change the lending arrangement at any time, but recipients are protected from sudden loss of access:

The lender revokes the slots (or the lender's tier drops below the slot count they have lent out, e.g., Pro → Starter). The recipient's connections in those slots enter a 14-day grace period. They keep working; you can still see and use them.
You receive a notification the moment grace starts: in-app banner, email, and push if enabled. Reminders fire as the deadline approaches.
You decide which connections to keep within your new effective slot count. Open Settings > Connected Banks and pick the connections to retain. The unselected ones are paused at the end of grace.
If you do not pick before grace expires, the system removes the most-recently-connected connections first (LIFO order) until you fit your new slot count. This is a safety default, not a punishment — your data is always preserved when a connection is paused.
You can also upgrade your own tier to absorb the slots permanently. If your owned tier provides enough slots to cover everything you have connected, no removal happens.

A "paused" connection is not deleted — it stops syncing and its accounts become read-only. Reconnecting later (after upgrading or receiving new slots) resumes everything where it left off.

Limits and Safeguards

Lender tier: must be Pro or Premium (sharing is gated to those tiers).
Allocation rate limit: a lender can grant up to 3 new allocations per day. This is a fraud-resistance measure — it does not affect normal household use.
Anti-pass-through: slots that you receive from someone else cannot be lent on to a third user. Only slots tied to your own subscription (or add-on packs you bought) qualify.
Two-party grants only: slots flow within an established sharing grant between two users. A Premium user with multiple grants can lend slots to each grant member independently, but each lending row is between exactly two users.
Grace period: 14 days from revocation or tier-drop event to the connection-pause deadline.

Tips

Slot lending pairs well with account sharing for couples who want one paying member to enable bank sync for both, while keeping each person's accounts private until they choose to share them.

If you are on Free and your household member lends you slots, you can connect banks — but you still get Free-tier features (2 budget methods, 1 currency, 6 months of history). To unlock more, upgrade your own subscription.

A slot lender cannot see what banks you connect into the slots they lent you. If you want them to, share specific accounts back via the per-account share toggle.