Fintech App Development Guide
Fintech app development is not new now, every now and then we keep on hearing this term. Though fintech app development is now a common term but it doesn’t mean that there is no development in this space, in fact fintech vertical is one of the most important and fastest growing verticals.
Almost everyday a new startup is starting in this space. Unlike other app development, fintech app development has to be done with extra safety the fintech app development companies must ensure the security of application along with speed and seamless user experience.
Here we are presenting a few pointers that can help you in planning and executing your fintech app development in a better way.
Stage 1: Planning the Fintech App Development
The first crucial stage of FinTech app development is planning where all the ideas about the given project are collected to provide detailed information and make it more simplified for the developers. Why it is essential? It is essential because of the following reasons:
⮚ It helps in providing an early insight into the current trends in the fintech sector, its target market, and competitors
⮚ It helps in determining the budget and cost for upcoming app development and marketing strategies
⮚ It helps in streamlining the development project
⮚ An effective app development concept is communicated to the developers and designers
As there are many complexities associated with mobile app development, pre-planning is an important part of the smooth processing of the project to achieve a considerable amount of success.
Another question arises- “What aspects should be taken into consideration for careful planning?” These aspects include:
I. Target market research
It is based on demographic factors (age, income & education level, occupation and so on), personal behaviour and lifestyle which can be traced through conduction of surveys and several marketing strategies.
It is important to find the target market because then you can determine which app features and functionality must be added to meet the expectations of your customers. What’s more, it will further assist in the development of the optimum monetization scheme to prepare the best app specifications for your customers via the launching of an effective marketing campaign.
II. Analyze Competitor Offering
Besides figuring out the taste and preference of your potential audience, it is prudent for you to also have wide research on your competitor’s fintech app to find out who are stronger than you. For this to happen, you have to go through numerous reviews and app ratings of the users with deep research.
If you go through all these aspects, you can get access to relevant information and get access to various features such as the user’s view about the speed and performance of the app and any flaws and clashes occurring in the app. This will help in the development of a specifically driven mobile app to meet your target customers’ expectations.
III. Defining Key Problems with their Solutions
Before going through fintech app development, it is important to identify some key issues which might affect the progress of the completion of the fintech app. First and foremost is a security which still remains a challenging aspect for online fintech domain app development. The developers should focus on developing a strategy that will step-up the safety aspect and prevent the online attack.
Second is transaction difficulty which is a common issue in mobile banking as deposit and withdrawal of money is still tedious and time-consuming. So, developers must focus on devising a strategy to speed up their transaction times to mitigate the given issue.
The third is minimizing the traditional habits among customers which can be done by racking up special efforts to showcasing numerous benefits associated with mobile banking which are not found in online banking.
IV. Deciding on exact features of the app in the future
It is also an important step as the time may come when there will be a change in the trends and new features shall be added to meet the changing requirements of tech-savvy customers. So, developers and bank management should keep a vigil on the latest technologies and trends which will disrupt the fintech industry soon.
V. Choosing of Suitable Operating System To Support your App
Before going for innovative FinTech app development, one thing the bank management should make sure that they should choose a suitable operating system (Windows, iOS, Android), list of development tools and a programming language perfectly meeting the requirement of developers.
When the time is taken into consideration, the planning period may last from two to five weeks.
You may also like to read — How Fintech Application Development is Changing the Financial Services
Stage 2: UI/UX Design of the Fintech App
The main work of fintech app development starts with the job of designers because the look of the app is more important than its coding. The basic principle of design is based on three pillars namely simplicity, transparency and actionable.
The design should be simple as it will be easier for the user to use it anytime. There should be transparency from the user’s side to view whatever they are clicking on their phone without much difficulty. Furthermore, they should be actionable as the mobile interface especially related to financial apps must be big enough to avoid silly mistakes happening due to small touch controls.
Not only this, mobile apps not only feature usability; but also show feelings. To humanize the UX design, the personalized experience must be considered as it provides an opportunity to connect with your customers genuinely.
Another aspect which the designer should keep in mind is to include push notifications which should be well-timed and highly valued. Nevertheless, the mobile app designers should design notifications in such a manner that it shall be sent for a short period and at a specific time.
The total period taken for complete UI/UX design takes two weeks or more which is more than enough.
Stage 3: Development of the Fintech App
The next step which vitalizes the complete design is the app development which is performed by the software engineers and comes in two parts:
a) Frontend Development
This developmental process deals with the conversion of the user interface into the functional code. It is the responsibility of the frontend developer to translate app design into well-defined codes so that it would be clearly displayed on the browser.
Furthermore, they should also ensure that its look is supported in all the current browsers and mobile app platforms, while also guaranteed that design is looking well in other computer resolutions.
It comprises various tools to build a healthy fintech app and includes HTML5, CSS3, Angular, jQuery, Bootstrap and many more. Thereby, frontend developer aims towards building a good looking, creative and artistic user interface to provide an awesome user experience.
b) Backend Development
This developmental process deals with data integration, security, and server-side configuration. The backend developer is accountable for providing CMS-based content and develop a logic that is needed to work as it is supposed to be. When the design front is taken into consideration, they must work in collaboration with the frontend development process to remove complexity in CMS setup and give customers easy handling of their app content.
In addition to this, backend technology’s stack comprises four elements:
i. Server
They are the lifeline of the mobile app framework as they provide shared resources (security, email, web services and many more) which permits them to operate and work as mobile app hosting platforms also. It comes as a cloud server (such as Google App Engine or Amazon AWS), which are utilized by large organizations; as a custom server for creating own server and having complete control over the app.
ii. Database
They are the one which makes any app more dynamic as it accepts the query, fetch the data and give it back to the customers using the given application.
iii. Middleware
A software working on the server which acts as a bridge between frontend and backend and enhances connectivity between the client and server. What’s more, they can also improve user and content management and authentication.
So, the developers should aim to keep the mobile app architecture simpler yet dynamic, organized and systematic. They must work to include notable tools such as C#, PHP, MySQL, MongoDB, Python, and Node.js.
Before proceeding to the next section, few things are essential for the developers to ponder on. It is how to build the app, whether as a native app or hybrid app or as a progressive web app?
If you want your developer to build native fintech app; then it will come with notable benefits:
⮚ It offers a reliable, fast and most responsive experience
⮚ It allows easy tapping into wider device functionality
⮚ It perfectly matches app UI/UX to platform conventions
If you want your developer to build hybrid fintech app; then it will come with notable benefits:
⮚ Only one codebase is required to manage the entire platform
⮚ An ideal time and money-saving option
⮚ Easy to scale to another platform
Likewise, building fintech applications by collaborating features of browser and web apps will help you to get access to several new features such as push notifications, load on the home screen and so on. Moreover, they are cheaper to develop, deploy, promote and maintain any application.
This stage is important as it helps in revealing and fixing bugs at the early stages. The mobile app development stage has a minimum duration of five weeks if the app is simple. In the case of complex fintech products, it will require up to five months.
Stage 4: Testing of the App
Within the conduction of the development process, testing of the fintech app continues simultaneously. It is a complex structure as they have to manage several features to offer a smooth and enjoyable experience to the customers. Therefore, it becomes crucial for the developer to perform a test based on a real-world scenario to create a flawless fintech app.
It is the responsibility of the Quality Assurance (QA) tester to deliver the best customer experience by focusing on the following aspects:
⮚ Functionality, to ensure the working of the module as per the expectation of the customers
⮚ UX & Usability, to ensure that there is not much requirement of time for displaying graphical attributes of the product
⮚ Performance, to ensure the swift working of the product on various browsers and operating systems without being affected by the issues such as slow page loading and low responsivity.
⮚ Security, to ensure the app is successfully meeting the standard security guidelines and comes with additional protection gears to prevent future hacker attacks
Having said that, the testing procedure of fintech apps looks like the following way:
● Data Gathering
It is the first stage of testing the fintech app and consists of research. A QA specialist needs to ger familiar with industry-specific terms to get a better understanding of the standards prevailing in the fintech industry.
● Identifying Test Requirements
After analyzing the collected data, all the requirements of the testing will be identified by the resting team to evaluate the list of the objectives successfully which includes both functional and business goals.
● Collecting fintech App Test Cases
A fintech app test schedule is created by QA specialists where cases are separated by functionality modules. At the end, all aspects with respect to the application such as performance, functionality, security and user experience must be covered to ensure bug-free application.
● Functional Testing
Important testing where the QA team runs tests to make sure that all the functions associated with the FinTech app development work as expected.
● Database Testing
This testing is done for ensuring easy-to-manage and structured storage of data. Besides this, there should be a mechanism in the database for effective data restoration or migration.
● Security Testing
This is the stage where testers assess the protection level of the user data and also ensure the automatic reporting of the data breaches or leaks. Furthermore, they should also consider handling unauthorized access such as automatic system shutdown.
● Usability Testing
It is an out-of-box testing approach for the QA manager to help all age-group users to navigate the app with ease. Moreover, this testing also ensures that people with illness, sight problems and even elderly can utilize the app appropriately.
● Performance Testing
This testing will help the testing teams to focus on checking page loading speeds, the performance of the app during an increase in traffic load and assessment of the product’s responsivity for different browsers.
So, after the app excels at all tests; it then undergoes a final test to ensure that all the app components work in coordination.
Stage 5: Marketing & Deployment
It is the stage where an app solution is released to be utilized by the end-users. It is an important aspect as it helps in attracting a large number of customers to utilize their financial transactions most effectively.
Before the official release date, there should be active and aggressive marketing and advertising so that a large number of tech-savvy customers get to know about your product with the provision of enough feedback.
The present world belongs to digital technology so fintech sectors must focus on promoting their financial products on social media and can even take the help of journalists and successful bloggers via search advertising and email circulation. However, it is difficult to access the overall cost and it should be fit within the budget.
Stage 6: Maintenance & Support
To have an uninterrupted and successful performance, it is very essential to provide maintenance and updating of the mobile fintech app. Do you know why mobile app maintenance is important? It is because:
⮚ It saves the app from getting abandoned on apps store
⮚ It provides security to the mobile app from cyber threat
⮚ Get used to user preferences
⮚ Keep apps relevant and updated
⮚ Keeps customers satisfied and happy
Thus, it is a part of the post-development phase and the cost associated with it is excluded from the total expenses.
Stage 7: Total Cost of Fintech App Development
The development cost of mobile fintech apps varies from place to place and it depends on the kind of feature set you want to build and this also depends on the location of your team. To give you an idea about the cost of fintech app development (If working with a firm which is based in low cost country like India)-
Simple fintech app — US$30,000 to US$75,000
Fintech app with mid level of complexity — US$1,00,000 to US$2,00,000
Complex Fintech App — US$2,00,000 to US$5,00,00
