All banking and finance processes—invoicing, payments, request processing, portfolio management, etc.—are being digitized to automate workflows and stay competitive. The way how users access financial services has significantly changed. Now they are looking for companies that offer mobile applications, chatbots, and personalization.

FinTech software has provided people with convenience, automation, tailored advice, and awesome user experience. Organizations that employ FinTech mobile apps can easily attract the audience, engage and retain customers.

Furthermore, a smartphone solution is a great tool to increase the conversion rate and mitigate a negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis. In this article, we will show you how to develop a mobile financial application that will meet your business-specific needs.

Why does your company need a mobile FinTech app?

Investment in FinTech mobile applications has seen rapid growth. In the first three quarters of 2019, financial apps raised over $3 billion in venture funding. In the context of coronavirus, customers were forced to stay at home and access services remotely. Since this is fast, simple, and convenient, people are unlikely to stop using them from their tech devices.

According to a new “Mobile Finance Apps Report” created by Liftoff and App Annie, customers used financial applications more than one trillion times while the number of registrations increased by 71% in 2019. Analysts say that this growth is accelerating due to COVID-19.

Top 3 reasons why your financial company need a fintech mobile app

• Now it’s much easier and cheaper to attract new customers with a smartphone solution rather than use other methods. The cost to receive an app install decreased by more than 76% (“Mobile Finance Apps Report” by Liftoff and App Annie).
• Your organization will be able to deliver financial products and services remotely, 24/7. As a result, you can increase the number of daily clients. by 5 and more times Hence, you will also boost sales and staff productivity.
• Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the popularity of banking and finance apps has seen exponential growth. Experts at deVere Group found the use of FinTench digital solutions has risen by 72% in Europe. To outrun competitors, you should build a FinTech mobile application.

“Consumers are turning to finance apps at record levels amidst volatility in the market and uncertainty over the economy,” —said a specialist at Liftoff.

With a FinTech mobile application, you will gain a competitive advantage in the market, deliver financial services without downtime, and continue generating profit even during an economic crisis.
What you should do before making a FinTech mobile app

Before building a financial mobile app, you should define the project objectives: what tasks the future product needs to perform, how it will help you attract customers and provide value. For this purpose, analyze the existing workflows and define what you can digitize.

Say, you have already had custom financial software for investment portfolio management. However, when the coronavirus outbreak forced people to stay at home, a set of offline services was suspended.

Now, your organization aims to launch a mobile banking application for opening and closing accounts online, issuing loans, withdrawing funds, and carrying out transactions.

So, research the audience needs—whether it is your employees or potential clients—to get a clear understanding of the product goals and features. If there is no possibility to make it yourself, you can always assign such analytics activities to a trustworthy vendor. Many IT firms offer such services, including Arateg.

In our FinTech software development company, we help our clients conduct a competitor analysis, create user stories, empathy maps, impact maps, and prepare a software requirements document. The analysis of customer preferences also allows us to choose the best app monetization strategy.

If you have a project idea and want to successfully implement it, drop us a message to receive a consultation for free.

Top 9 features for your mobile FinTech app

You don’t have to come up with something new and extraordinary. The key success factor is to solve customer pains points while providing an amazing user experience. We recommend that you add some value missed in financial mobile apps of your competitors and asked by your audience, for instance, an AI-based chatbot or tailored investment advice.

Although there are so many different FinTech digital products, there is a basic set of features that almost every smartphone application should have.

1. Secure sign-in and sign-up

Allow customers to register in your FinTech mobile app with a few clicks. This process should be fast and simple. The same is with sign-in.

To increase information security, enable sign-in via:

• fingerprint authentication
• voice recognition
• face recognition
• two-factor authentication

These techniques will help protect user accounts, assuring that only the owner can access his or her financial data.

2. Personal account

Customers should have personal accounts to perform various operations. These operations can involve financial transactions, online payments, the establishment of credit, currency exchange, and balance checking. An account should contain information such as name, last name, contacts, etc., as well as connect with a user card or cards.

3. Push notifications and personalization

Push notifications is a must-have for any financial mobile app. However, today you need something more than just interacting with users via messages. They need personalization. While simple notifications often stay unnoticed, tailored offers add true value and improve customer satisfaction.

To provide personalization, you should integrate analytics of user banking histories, activity data, payment data, etc. The audience segmentation will allow sending personalized messages to each group.

4. Personal finance management and data visualization

Customers will appreciate having the ability to manage bank accounts, credits, investment, and budgets in one place. Allow users to carry out digital payments with a few clicks, calculate expenses for different periods, and view a purchasing history.

Integrate data visualization to make financial information take a form of graphs, charts, and tables. As a result, clients will have a clear vision of their spending habits, budget, and expenditures.

Analysts at Statista conducted a survey on mobile banking and found that:

• 62% of consumers in the USA say that mobile banking provides them with a better awareness of their financial situation, which is a great benefit.
• 41% of customers have fewer concerns about personal finance management due to mobile banking apps.
• 38% of respondents appreciate increased awareness of services provided by their bank.

Personal finance management via a FinTech mobile app will enable you to deliver a range of services remotely, attract more customers, and improve employee productivity. If you’re developing a product for investors, you should allow them to buy securities, participate in IPO or ICO, and create investment portfolios via a smartphone solution.

5. QR code

Saving user time, you will improve customer engagement and boost loyalty. With a QR code incorporated in a FinTech mobile app, people don’t have to manually input card details every time they need to make a payment or money transfer.

It may be annoying when being in a hurry, a person enters a wrong digit and then has to repeat the process. Thanks to QR code scanning, your clients won’t have such unpleasant experiences.

6. Cashback

When asking yourself how to build a FinTech mobile application that will attract and retain clients, consider adding a cashback feature. People enjoy having cards and using services that allow them to receive money from each payment. The same goes for smartphone finance and banking apps.

Employing cashback, your financial company will improve Net Promoter Score (NPS indicates whether clients are likely to recommend a product or service or not), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT estimates the overall customer satisfaction with the product or service), and other essential metrics.

You can take it a step further and provide customers with a higher percentage of money return if they spend more via your FinTech mobile application.

7. Artificial intelligence

According to the report by Research and Markets, the world’s AI in the FinTech market was valued at $6.67 billion in 2019 and is predicted to reach $22.6 billion by 2025.

You can employ AI technology to analyze customer financial health, leverage a credit scoring system, offer tailored recommendations, warn against wrong financial choices, as well as create personalized financial plans.

So, incorporate specific AI algorithms that will monitor client transactions, balances, and interest rates to provide personal spending advice.

8. Chatbot

This feature will let your financial company offer 24/7 client support. A chatbot will instantly answer frequently asked questions, provide the requested information, or perform the required action. Users will save time and energy while employees will be relieved from performing a part of their work, which means they will devote themselves to more complex tasks.

Furthermore, advanced chatbots can automatically remind customers about bill payments, provide guidance in financial issues, and warn about a low remaining balance.

9. Authenticity of information and peer-to-peer transactions

When integrating a document management system or data storage, you should protect information from being altered or deleted, especially by unauthorized users. To resolve this challenge, you can employ blockchain technology.

Blockchain is a decentralized digital database that maintains a continuously growing number of transactions. MarketWatch reports that blockchain in the FinTech market is anticipated to reach $6.7 billion by 2023.

With blockchain, you can easily ensure authenticity of information: once data is uploaded on the ledger, it cannot be changed or removed from it. Each block in the chain includes a hash that links it with the previous block, making data distortion (block substitutions, data changes, etc.) impossible. Using cryptographic algorithms and saving the history of activities, blockchain increases the security of transactions and sensitive information.

According to PWC’s survey “Financial Services Technology 2020 and Beyond: Embracing disruption”, 56% of participants recognize the importance of adopting blockchain.

Customer identity verification and payment processing are those fields where blockchain technology can also help you. For instance, it can enable users to make more fast money transfers without third parties (e.g., banks), manage personal identity information, digitally sign documents, and sign in without passwords.

Learn how blockchain helps FinTech companies comply with regulations, reduce counterparty risks, and solve other challenges.

We recommend that you read a comprehensive guide “Does my business actually need to adopt blockchain?” that includes a checklist to define whether you will benefit from this technology or not.

A few tips in conclusion

To create a quality FinTech mobile application that will address the main pain points, you should start with analyzing your business-specific needs. The research of customer problems will show you how you can assist them. Investigating competitors, you will define their strong and weak sides, coming up with features they don’t have and better user experience.

Another success factor is to choose a reliable FinTech app development company. To find the right partner, search it on trusted B2B review and rating platforms like Clutch, TechReview, GoodFirms, view portfolio case studies, and the vendor’s achievements.

In case you don’t have enough in-house resources to perform marketing activities mentioned above, hire an IT firm that performs such kinds of tasks.

If you aim to build a FinTech mobile app, contact our team and receive a project consultation for free. Our specialists will get back to you within 24 hours.