Stop Your Customer Turning Ebenezer Scrooge Developing Personal Finance Apps Like Mint

Holla Peeps!

I think you have just started with your winter holiday plans. So what you plan to do this year? WAIT! Prior to that have you checked the status of your finances? Of course, you do!

Money, savings, and budget are the few terms just jamming up your head right now, yes?

It’s the same situation your customers feel as well.

Just like you feel your finances to be managed automatically, so does your customers. They too have the right to make the best out of small expenditures.

Chillax! I won’t be taking more than ten minutes. Sit down on your couch with a glass of eggnog, since the read is going to be long, but useful.

How to Come Out of Your Scrooge Mode

Say you are into banking or any kind of investment or loan business. In this 21st century, what could be the fastest way to reach your target customers — An obvious answer — Mobile App.

So I will be talking no-nonsense on financial app development like Mint in this blog.

Yes, I will be chit-chatting on a type of solution that can help change people’s financial behavior for better. And when it comes to financial app development I think most of you aim to make an app like Mint or Money Lover or might be a targeted-app only for your business.

Why am I bragging about a personal finance app like Mint.com? Do your customers need an app to track their finances? What is the need of an app to engage with your loan or funds business?

The answer is simple, you see. We all love to save money. You, me or anyone out there.

With 60% of the Americans spending more than their income — having a personal finance app like Mint to manage your savings will be like a Messiah! Or you will be visualizing yourself like the pauper standing just below this terrace in the image above.

As all can’t be the Wolf of the Wall Street — you have to be Ebenezer Scrooge at times.

Why Building a Personal Finance App Add Perks to Your Business?

Joshua Norton was thinking to put some money in a Winter Tour Package to the Bahamas, but his personal finance app gave him a friendly reminder: He had just dropped $150 for Halloween treats and have plans to spend $1500 for Christmas gifts for 3, shopping on Black Friday and buying a Turkey on Thanksgiving.

When he looked at that, he was like ‘OK, coming two months would be expensive”, said the young millennial from Florida who has recently started working.

That notification flashed in his Mint app, prompted Joshua to hold off from making an investment $250. He credits the app that he has been using since his University days, it pulls him back before making a big investment.

When you intend to build a financial app, see how many people use expense tracking apps like Joshua. This will help understand how to create a personal finance/investment app.

Some popular apps who made a market as popular personal financial apps are –

• Mint
• Money Lover
• Monefy
• Level Money

This piece of statistics from Federal Reserve Board tells how mobile banking is on the rise as of 2016 and shows the peculiar customer traits as well –

These stats will definitely excite you and direct to make a personal finance app like Mint.com.

Yup, Mint finance app, built by Aaron Patzer was only for the US and the Canadian markets. In 2009, Intuit, the tax preparation software bought Mint.com for $170 million. Now the solution has a website along with iOS and Android apps with 15 million users across North America. And in very recent Mint’s head of product, Kevin Kirnconfirms about the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

So what makes me talk so much about Mint.com? How to make such an app to double your revenues?

Well, let me get you closer to the point.

What Do You Need to Know to Make a Personal Finance App like Mint.com?

Mint.com, ask the ones who are using it regularly. My God! It’s like Christ to them (LOL!)

Not just its usability, the look and feel, security and obviously the FREE features — all is just so enticing.

Mint has focused on the concept to make their users do almost no work, by automating aspects such as categorizing data, reducing numbers of fields in the sign-up form etc. So if you are into financial app development and in case if you have hired financial app developers — check if they spare your users from entering data manually. Then the app has a fair chance to succeed from day 1.

Mint app allows all their users to have a full picture of their finances under one roof and even advises on different ways to save money.

Features You Need to Take Care to Build a Personal Finance App

Now let me just cut the clutter and get you straight to the point. Why should you make an app like Mint.com? What features you need to care or ask your financial app development company to focus?

1. See if the app is going to help your customers keep all their finances in one place

The customers who are going to download a personal finance app like Mint will like to link up many accounts. It might be a bank, credit, investment or a loan account.

In the Mint app, you will find that they automatically link to respective website and pulls all these different user accounts in a single app. The account aggregation technology they use is integrated from reliable sources, like in case of Mint it’s Intuit.

Read More: Dont Make These Startup Mistakes While Developing a Personal Finance App

So ask your financial app developers if it is possible to build an app that stores every data in one place like Mint.

1. Check if the app comes with features like categorized transactions

If you have ever downloaded Mint app, you will see that they let you download transaction which categorizes based on vendor’s name or how you have categorized in the past.

So what prompts Mint app to fill in the transaction to the perfect category?

Mint is aware of several merchants as they use Yellow Pages data categorization service. This allows users find businesses in the nearby location. The data in the Yellow Pages is approved by SIC codes. A four-digit code assigned by the US government to classify industrial region and identify the primary businesses. Even Mint uses machine learning in their categorization algorithm to allow the management of data.

Even you can enter data about those purchases that you made with cash. With their geolocation capability, the app can match a transaction at a point of purchase to a nearby merchant to register the recent spending and keep the account updated in real time.

1. See how your financial app developers can help users in budgeting

The Mint app just not track expenditures, but monitors budgets as well. The system can detect the transaction that falls under a budget category and automatically updates. This feature helps the users to a lot extent and increases app’s engagement.

Users get a notification on a daily basis if their budget exceeds. It might be in the form of email or push alerts. Ask your financial app developers to set features that can allow users to set up notices for their account balances, large purchases, bill reminders, annual fees or send simple budget alerts. Alerts in the form of graphical representations, like a pie chart, bar graphs create a positive user experience.

1. How will you like to promote your app — as a FREE one or as a PREMIUM service?

In case, you take up financial app development like Mint, you need to think about the monetization ways. The Mint personal finance is FREE, but it has its own way to make money. Mint offers their users to save money, compare prices, interest rates and even get a referral fee from their customers.

Say the credit card you are using charges a high rate of interest, Mint suggests you alternatives and let you save money. For this recommendation, they will charge a small fee. — that’s a SMART way to make money from an app, isn’t it?

Even they use aggregate financial data for a comparative study on budgeting and sell these data to third parties for marketing and promotional purpose. However, without violating any security breaches. They have clearly mentioned about this aggregation in their Privacy Page.

Read More: How to Launch an App Successfully? — 5 Pitfalls to Avoid

Check with your financial app developers to decide upon monetization aspects and get the balls rolling in your favor.

1. Financial app development like Mint demands higher security features

Mint app protects usernames and passwords with the high level of security. They protect the sensitive data in a separate database using multi-layered hardware that matches the security standard of banks. Even Mint is verified and monitored by the third-parties like TRUSTe, VeriSign.

Let me show you an instance, if someone has Mint.com login, that person cannot use the bank account information. As per Aaron Patzer, the account information of every customer is encrypted and stored and constantly monitored by the Mint server.

Why Is Mobile App Development Financial Services On the Rise?

Financial app development like Mint comes with many pro advantages. And that’s the reason I sat to write this long blog. Let me quickly enlist some few advantages and draw my conclusion.

1. There are around 2 billion smartphone users. So, if you opt for financial app development, it should give your clients an instant access to your product anytime and anywhere.
2. Your financial app developers should help you build a responsive design that offers rapid functionality and high user engagement
3. The personal finance app development helps you to reach a defined target audience and attract more people.
4. With mobile app development financial services becoming mainstream, more marketplaces are emergingto distribute your product.

Drawing to the Close

Financial app development like Mint will be something huge and big. However, at the end of all these hard work, you enjoy three basic things –

1. A clear strategy for your next approach towards the target audience
2. Catering services to make clients happy
3. Earn a valuable reward

It is important to arrange a proper workflow before you invest in personal finance app development like Mint. Even you need to know how to heal your client’s pain points.

Original Source: Innofied Blog

About the Author

Moumita is a Content Marketer and a Strategist and something which keeps her on are latest technologies, gadgets, and tech gossips. Presently she is with Innofied, helping the team to achieve their content marketing goals using the best industry practices. You will enjoy her blog on Medium or on popular websites where she keeps on writing on and off. And if she is not in a mood for blogging, she give a try to poetry. Find her poems here.