The FinTech apps industry is encountering rapid growth considering there’s an ongoing revolution in both customer behavior and the way businesses operate. Everything from banking to insurance to cryptocurrency is seemingly coming up with newer forms of ways to interact with its customers, majorly through fintech apps for mobile! Based on reports from Statista, over 65% of Americans plan to shift to digital banking exclusively by 2022. One of the major driving factors of such a trend is customer experience.
The FinTech industry is quite varied, expanding over several sectors. According to insights and studies from CB, there are currently 41 VC- backed Fintech unicorns with a combined worth of $154.1 b. In addition, the market raised around $13.4 billion only in the first quarter of 2021.
Moving on to the revolution in the FinTech market, we shall now highlight the importance of mobile apps in the industry, and then about ways to build an ideal FinTech app.
Reasons Why You Need FinTech Apps
The time to build a Fintech app is now! Apart from the growing numbers of the FinTech industry, here are three other compelling reasons why you should invest in a FinTech app:
1. Financial Illiteracy
It is a general assumption that people are now more aware of their economic warfare than ever. Especially with the growing student loan crisis globally, people focus their attention on managing their money now more than ever. However, the opposite holds. A survey from S&P suggests that around 57% of Americans are financially illiterate.
Other findings also reveal that the financial literacy rate among Americans has decreased from 43% to 34% since 2009. This implies that about eight in ten Americans have some sort of debt and that their finances are one of the major sources of their stress. These numbers are shocking even among millennials. About 76% lack basic financial education, making the scenario all the more difficult.
Hence, this depression makes for the huge potential for mobile apps. If an app can help people manage their finances without knowing all the financial jargon, it will be a huge hit.
2. Open Banking
The next major reason for the rise of FinTech apps is the shift towards open banking. Considering how businesses evolve their working during the pandemic, banks are bringing their services to their people by going all digital.
Not only does digital banking enable interconnectedness, but it also incentivizes the data. Using this data, they remain relevant to their customers. Open Banking also helps in building complex FinTech solutions to manage financial data.
3. The Domination of Mobile Phones
Currently, there are more than 6.3 billion unique mobile phone users across the world. The usage of apps is hence, growing at a much faster rate than predicted five years ago. It is also safe to mention a strong demand for automation and the availability of mobile solutions for almost anything, especially related to finance. As of now, there are only limited bank managing apps, apps that support online payments, and for making budgets.
How To Build An Ideal FinTech App
In this section, we walk you through the different steps of creating a FinTech mobile app solution. This app development process is common for various industry sectors, including cryptocurrency, banking, credit score management, security, and investments.
Let’s go through the steps one by one.
1. Choose a niche
The first aspect of a Fintech app development is the niche. Decide on the several functionalities of the app. Your app value proposition should align with the process of development. Some of the common functionalities of an app for increasing ROI for landlords, for instance, is:
- User authentication and encryption
- Secure hosting
- Checking credit score
- Payment gateway
- Access to banking data
- Real-time transfers
- Chat to communicate with users and customer support
Just like that, the list of your app functionalities will provide a blueprint for the niche you want to target and the marketing activities you want to follow. Also, it will help you have an idea of the app development costs. As experts in the FinTech app market, we recommend you have a clear understanding and solution proposal to make the development process all the more streamlined.
2. Choose Technology Stack
An important aspect of developing FinTech apps is choosing the right language for them. Currently, there are multiple languages available for developers to use. However, the selection must be based on factors like the project’s deadline, complexity, preference, the developer’s expertise, and much more.
Here, we highlight some of the top-notch developing languages for coding apps divided among native apps, cross-platform apps, and progressive web apps.
Native Apps: These apps are usually built following the technical guidelines of a particular OS. This means they do not provide a cross-platform function. They have the smoothest performance and the greatest user experience.
- Ios-based: For these native apps, you can use Objective C, Swift, Apple XCode, and IoS SDK.
- Android-based: You can go for Java, Kotlin, Android Studio, and Android SDK.
Cross-Platform Apps: The next important apps we are going to talk about here is the cross-platform app. They usually require a small developer team and expertise in languages like React Native and C#. In addition, if you want to go for a hybrid app, you must choose an app development partner with expertise in HTML 5 and PhoneGap.
Progressive Web Apps: For Progressive web apps, other effective technologies that can be used are Node.js and C++.
3. Ensure Legal Compliances
Once you’re through your app niche and features, it becomes critical to ensure that the legalities are in place. Based on the geographical area you want to release your app in, legal compliance may vary. So, you need to check on security aspects of client’s identities and carefully work around the same.
4. Create or Hire a Team
Now, this may seem like an easy step to achieve, but it is not. Amongst all of these steps mentioned above, this is the most crucial one as it will change the face of your app. Your team should collaborate with you like a partner and provide you with the best solutions specific to your business challenges.
- UI/UX Design: An ideal UI/UX design is essential for all Fintech applications. Since the user interacts with your design, your app developers need to ensure that the app is easy to use, explicitly functional in all aspects, and is devoid of needless features. Some of the must-haves for your UI/UX design are:
- Colors in alignment with the branding, and yet not too dull or too bright.
- Straightforward user journey
- Accessibility of different options shouldn’t be hard to discover
- No useless or crowding of features.
5. Develop an MVP
The next step here is to start with a Minimum Viable Product, justifying the solution you want to provide with the app. It ensures that the app is running well and adding value to your customers, as planned. In addition, an ideal MVP can help create room for efficient feedbacks and scope of improvement.
6. Improve and Support your FinTech app
The last step in the app development process is to keep upgrading and to improve your app with relevant functionalities, as per the feedback. The work of app developers does not end with the development and deployment of the app. Also, you can add newer features from time to time to attract more people.
As experts in the mobile and enterprise field, we have helped multiple FinTech companies to achieve higher ROI with their mobile apps. Get in touch with us to have a solution-centric approach for your Fintech business challenges.
