A Complete Guide to Fintech App Development

Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve probably caught wind of the fintech software development storming the tech world. Fintech, abbreviated for financial technology, isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a game-changer, revolutionizing the way we manage money and carry transactions.

Considering its rich data landscape and history of innovation, it’s no surprise that the finance sector continues to inspire the development of the most advanced solutions.

But what exactly is a fintech app? What do Fintech Apps do? How to develop a Fintech App? And, what does financial software development look like?

Herein, we answer these questions and share a comprehensive overview of this amazing tech area. Read on to find out everything you must know about what’s happening at a crossroad of finance and technology. Or skip the queue and get all the answers under 2 minutes –

 

 

What Exactly is a Fintech App?

Primarily, fintech is an umbrella for businesses leveraging technological solutions to enhance, automate or streamline any financial processes and services. Though fintech is curated as a broader term, we see the industry evolving at an unprecedented pace for both customers and businesses. From cryptocurrency to InsurTech to investment apps and mobile banking, fintech is taking different shapes and sizes.

If you are imagining fintech, you’re probably picturing startups that use bespoke technologies. But to your surprise, traditional banks and conventional financial institutions are also adopting fintech services.

This surge in fintech adoption underlines the intertwining of technology with the fintech industry. The introduction of ATMs, personal finance apps, credit cards, digital trading and high-frequency trading are some advancements to keep count. Nowadays, fintech apps span an extensive array, leveraging data science, machine learning algorithms, and emerging technology like Blockchain to perform tasks like running hedge funds and credit card assessments.

Now that you’ve grasped the essence of what a fintech app envelopes, it’s time to explore the utmost crucial element – Monetization Strategies. After all, understanding how to effectively monetize your fintech app is paramount for ensuring sustainability and success in today’’s bottleneck competition.

How to Monetize Your Fintech App?

After deciding to create a fintech app, the foremost thing to do is choose a primary monetization model. Later in the fintech software development (once your app is up and running), you can introduce additional features and services depending on different monetization principles, but to start – it’s advisable to invest on something that reaps your ROI (Return On Investment).

In essence, the difference in the monetization model lies in who will be your payer. It can be the user of the service, an intermediary service or seller, or a third party that is beneficiary of all or on some of the transactions happening from your app. Here, we’ve listed some of the most commonly used monetization models adopted by fintech companies.

• Selling Big Data

There is no doubt, fintech apps are a perfect way to extract valuable and useful financial data pertaining to a buyer’s persona encompassing shopping habits, average spending, consumption of particular services, payment frequency etc.

It’s a common practice for fintech companies to offer paid access to this data (anonymously, of course) to any third-party looking to optimize their marketing or sales strategy with improved targeting and high-quality data sets for their Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms.

Fintech apps are a perfect source of valuable, usable financial data pertaining to users’ spending habits, payment frequency, average spending, consumption of particular services, and much more. It is not uncommon for fintech companies to offer paid access to this data (anonymized, of course) to any interested third party looking to optimize their marketing or sales strategy with better targeting and high-quality data sets for their artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. (The above-mentioned Mint does that, as well.)

• Ads and Referrals

Having a huge customer base, benefits businesses like you with targeted ads and referrals from relevant advertisers. For example, Mint leverages this model for the free version of their service, blending it with other revenue-generated mechanisms for premium services, like constant monitoring of the user’s credit score.

• Transactional Fees

This is a hot pick for mobile payments and payment systems, where fees are applied to either all or some specific types of payment types. WorldRemit is a good example of cash exchange services that provides lower rates on global money transfers with flexible options for receiving remitted funds.

The transactional fees model can be used as an addition to subscription or as the primary revenue channel.

• Paid Access to APIs

Fintech companies, especially the one operating a payment gateway and related services, provide convenient APIs that allow other businesses to easily use them by making calls right from the code of their software products. For example, Stripe, their API helps countless businesses make and receive payments in any currency across the globe without investing in having their own payment systems.

In a nutshell, access to API requires a monthly subscription, or often, providers charge customers according to their API resource consumption.

• Subscriptions

The most common and familiar model for anyone who has ever used an online service or any mobile app is the subscription model. In this, users get a trial period varying from a few days to weeks to understand the features and decide on its relevance for their requirements. Once the trial period gets complete, users are charged with the chosen subscription model costs at regular intervals.

Which Functional Domains to Make a Fintech App?

Fintech is a huge industry with countless verticals and business models that keep evolving with time. So, without any ado let’s dive a little deeper and understand the popular domains where financial technology is being actively used these days. Especially, if you are at square one of building a fintech app, you must check out these categories for inspiration.

• Digital Banking

Traditional banking apps have been around for quite a long and can be easily traced on the majority of smartphones across the globe. These fintech apps offer users an accessibility to manage personal funds, pay utility bills and make seamless payment transactions, generating spending reports and performing numerous other tasks, all at one place.

Simply put, a banking fintech app can be developed by corresponding financial institutions or any third-party, like Chime.

• Insurance

Insurance may seem to be playing in a race of its own, still it portrays it as a bright representative of the modern fintech industry.

Next-gen insurance firms significantly depend on the analysis of big data and use of artificial intelligence to create personalized insurance policies aligned with a variety of customer preferences and interests. At the same time, they provide compliance with relevant regtech standards and legal requirements of the customer’s country/state of residence.

• Seamless Payment Transactions

Seamless and secure online payments have conventionally been among the top picks that swapped the sluggish and inflexible banks of the pre-digital era. This gave rise to the contactless payments and payments made through QR code.

Big names like Stripe, Klarna, Venmo have reengineered the payment for individuals and businesses alike, whereas money-transfer services like PayPal, Payoneer and many others have made it incomparably easier for people worldwide to transfer money.

• Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrency has been the buzzword nowaday, and the driving force behind fintech world dynamic expansion. Financial software development services are represented by crypto-exchanges, trading platforms and  real-time investment, along with multi-currency wallets supporting both physical and digital currencies.

A handful of these wallets support blockchain technology for storing user’s data and financial records.

• Borrow and Finance

This is another hyped domain of fintech apps, consisting of finch solutions for microfinancing and POS lending apps. Primarily, these apps are gaining momentum as people are spending more time shopping online which is usually not provided by traditional banks.

Also, these apps include P2P lending services that allow people to borrow money from each other and charge a broker’s commission on every transaction.

• Robo-advising in Wealth Management

Stock market dynamics need not just knowledge, experience and intuition, but automation and the use of advanced AI/ML algorithms for data analytics and trend detection.

Here, intelligent algorithmic platforms aka robotic assistance comes into the picture as they assist users with wealth management and investment management for a fraction of the complete cost offered by human resources at banks and financial institutions. Some of the popular apps in this domain include  Robinhood, Betterment, Moneyfarm, etc.

• Financial Planning

Personal finance management apps are immensely popular among users. For example, PocketGuard, Goodbudget, Mint are some of the handy mobile apps that facilitate the process of making informed financial decisions.

These apps automatically keep track of the user’s expenses, notify of overspending in sensitive categories and help keep track of their budget.

As we explore the distinctive domain in which fintech apps are making strides, it’s time to step into the intricacies of fintech software development and understand how these innovative solutions come to life.

What  Does Financial Software Development Look Like?

Before stepping into the financial software development of your amazing idea or suite of investment apps, it’s inevitable to skip the pre-flight checklist before any coding commences. The development process can be easily broken down into the following steps.

Step 1: Decide Your Niche

I know, you would have figured this one by yourself by now – else, you wouldn’t be here reading this blog. Though, it may take a business analyst to probe the market for vacant niches and opportunities that others may have skipped.

With a general idea in mind, you’re all set to start!

Step 2: Outline Your Monetization Model

As already discussed, the monetization model is unskippable for your app’s success. On the other hand, keeping things minimal for monetization models in the MVP version is equally important.

So, choose the most appropriate and basic one for the pilot and eventually add more in the future as you discover new opportunities and define new revenue generation streams. In layman’s terms, go with what makes the most sense and takes the least effort to implement for now!

Step 3: Don’t Skip on Compliance

In context to mobile app development for fintech, compliance goes far beyond just adhering to app publishing guidelines for Google Play and Apple’s App Store. So, considering your target audience, you should conduct compliance research to identify potential legal concerns and restrictions.

Once the potential red flags are identified, ensure the development process adheres to compliance. This may also encompass more stringent quality assurance with a focus on security and penetration testing.

Step 4: Define MVP Features

Outline the key values and user stories that will lay the foundation of the functional scope of the first roll-out. Keep it simple, freeze it, and don’t let scope step in at this moment and create unnecessary delays. Later in the development stage, you’ll be able to expand the functionality of the app depending on the customer’s review and feedback, A/B testing and evolving vision of the product.

Step 5: Partner with a Trusted Service Provider

With almost everything done, it’s time to decide on the development team. Don’t worry, if you are a rookie to the development world, partnering with a reputable financial software development company is a good idea. Their enterprise-level experts will share the onus of everything from open-source components to compliance in the most expedient and cost-effective manner.

Step 6: Roll-Out, Gather Feedback and Improve

Finally, it’s time for the roll-out!

Whether you plan to develop an insurance app, financial planning app, a third-party payment  app or any other type of financial software, the probability of getting it done with the first try is thin. Software product development is an iterative process, so be mindful of revisiting the scope again and again to deliver improvements and optimizations.

Features and Tech Stack Adopted by Industry Mammoths

After exploring various fintech solutions, their monetization strategies and steps to follow in developing a fintech app, it’s time to delve into the process of developing a fintech app and underline the features. Though a trusted financial software development company will manage every tech-challenge, understanding the process is unskippable.

While each app is unique, there are some defined features typically found in all financial software products.

Technology Stack Chosen by Disruptive Forerunners

To have a comprehensive understanding of the technologies used in fintech apps, it’s recommended to see trending financial apps and what they share in common.

Venmo

• Cloud Services: AWS
• DevOps Solutions: Docker, CMake
• Frameworks: Backbone.js, PowerShell
• Add-ons: nginx, Amplitude, Braintree
• Programming Languages: JavaScript, PHP, Python, Java, TypeScript, C#, Ruby, Go, Swift, Objective-C, C++, C, Perl, Lua

Chime

• Cloud Services: AWS
• Databases and Stores: Citus, Kafka, Snowflake
• DevOps Solutions: GitHub, Kubernetes, Visual Studio, CircleCI
• Frameworks: React Native, Ruby on Rails
• Add-Ons: Looker, Optimizely, Plaid, Segment
• Programming Languages: Elixir, JavaScript, Ruby

Klarna

• Cloud Services: AWS
• DevOps Solutions: Docker, New Relic
• Frameworks: PowerShell
• Add-Ons: Apex, nginx, SendGrid
• Programming Languages: Python, JavaScript, PHP, Java, TypeScript, C, C#, Ruby, Go, Objective-C, Kotlin, Scala, Elixir, Rust, Perl, CoffeeScript, ActionScript, Erlang

Conclusion:

As the fintech market continues to soar, there’s no better time to ride the bandwagon and build your own fintech app. So, whether you’re foreseeing a neobank, insurance platform, a handy budgeting tool, or trading app, the opportunities are endless in this digital landscape.

At Apptunix, we’re here to assist you through every step of the fintech app development services. From conceptualization to implementation, our enterprise-level experts are dedicated to helping you bring your vision to life. Reach out to our presale team today to discover how we can turn your fintech dreams into a reality.