Financial App Development: Fresh Ideas and Best Practices

Fintech app development can be a daunting task. A good product must be functional, easy to adopt, and have a snazzy feature that sets it apart from hundreds of other apps. Before your dive head-first into creating a new piece of software, check out your competition, and don’t forget about the customer needs analysis. If you are interested in financial app development, this website can provide a list of solutions for building anything money-related. Whether your goal is a simple calculator or the whole smorgasbord of features from cashback to investing, you should give it a look.

The Most Popular Categories of Fintech Software

Financial institutions were the first to use the full potential of emerging digital technologies to create new solutions for their customers. Once mobile Internet access became more available, banks, lending providers, brokerages, and startups flooded the market with apps. However, most of them are niche products, devoted to specific end-user goals.

Types of Fintech apps:

• personal finances and budgeting;
• bookkeeping for businesses and individuals;
• online banking platforms;
• tax management;
• P2P lending software;
• e-commerce payment gateways;
• credit score calculators;
• cashback and rewards;
• cryptocurrency exchanges;
• brokerages;
• pension and insurance;
• crowdfunding solutions.

Experts estimate the market size for financial app development to be more than $300 billion. It is projected to rapidly grow in the next decade, as more people around the world switch to digital for all their financial needs.

Choosing a profitable niche for your Fintech project is the first step to building a successful app. Let’s examine some of the most popular categories and list the best cases for each.

Personal finances and budgeting

Individual wealth management is one of the fastest-growing areas of Fintech app development. Users connect these mobile apps to their bank accounts to monitor expenses, set aside some funds and plan their monthly and yearly budgets.

One of the most popular apps of this type is Mint. It comes with a basic free version and paid features like personal investment advising. It tracks your goals and can provide a general overview of your financial health. Being praised for its easy-to-navigate UI, it has the largest user base to date.

Features to include in your app:

• integration with multiple bank accounts;
• support for international currencies;
• dashboard to track earnings and spendings;
• estimates and budgeting forecasts;
• ability to set recurrent payments and create schedules.

Bookkeeping for businesses and individuals

Businesses from small to large and solopreneurs depend on accounting software. While corporations often prefer sophisticated custom-built solutions, “the smaller fish” uses convenient and streamlined mobile products of financial app development. 

This market niche continues to grow at an almost 10% annual rate. QuickBooks is probably the most downloaded app of this type. Directed at mom-and-pop shops, other smaller businesses, independent online stores, it provides users with basic accounting features, invoicing, and payroll. It automates many time-consuming tasks allowing entrepreneurs to concentrate on sales or product development.

Features to include in your app:

• managing all accounts payable and receivable;
• directing cash flow;
• managing depreciation of business assets like equipment or real estate;
• international currency conversion;
• integration with a bank account and merchant accounts on platforms like PayPal;
• expense tracking and forecasting;
• budget allocation.

P2P lending software

Crowdlending is one of the largest financial market segments that has shown incredible growth in app development.  Pandemic has positively impacted P2P lending, with more people looking for alternative ways to borrow money or earn a small profit by lending it. Experts the niche to expand at a rate of almost 30% during the next decade.

Digital wallets like Venmo present their users with a range of options, in addition to allowing them to pay and get paid. Lending is a natural feature to include in any peer-to-peer transactional app. Unlike banks, crowd lenders on the platform don’t require borrowers to provide background checks or credit scores. While it is a high-risk activity, P2P lending can be a lifesaver in some situations. The revenue model for app development usually includes charging users a small fee for every transaction.

Features to include in your app:

• calculators for loans;
• creditworthiness score;
• pre-qualification for borrowers;
• user matching to find the best lender-borrower pair, using such measures as interest rate or loan amount;
• investment algorithm that helps lenders diversify their loan portfolios to mitigate risks.

Cryptocurrency exchanges and other blockchain apps

App development for blockchain and cryptocurrency shares many of the characteristics found in other financial software. What makes it innovative is the ability to trade and receive crypto funds while remaining completely anonymous, and their decentralization. Blockchain apps are not limited to trading. This technology can be applied anywhere from logistics to compliance checks.

Binance, one of the more widely used platforms, has a mobile app that allows its users to trade more than 500 tokens, store them in a digital wallet, and even lend and borrow cryptocurrency. 

Features to include in your exchange app:

• anti-fraud measures that include user authentication and verification; 
• an engine for trading assets;
• analytics and forecasts;
• hot and cold wallets for storing tokens;
• alerts and notifications for traders;
• private and public APIs
• protection from DDoS attacks and other security features.

App development for payment gateways

Payment gateways are a necessary part of all digital products developed for online payments. Bundled, or stand-alone, these apps allow their users to securely transfer funds, pay for products and services and manage their e-commerce stores. While the market is divided between a few large companies, like Stripe or PayPal, there’s always a place for a new startup that can offer breakthrough niche solutions.

Features to include in your app:

• full compliance with international card processing security standards;
• anti-fraud detection;
• secure user data storage to remove the need to manually enter payment info;
• international currency support.

Conclusion

Financial app development remains a hot spot for global growth. Despite the ever-increasing competition, the market continues to expand at an astonishing rate offering possibilities for Fintech players big or small. Experts advise digital entrepreneurs to focus on a smaller niche or audience instead of creating a “swiss-army-knife” solution. Active mergers and acquisitions performed by larger corporations provide newcomers with an option to build and sell their niche-focused or technology-driven companies for a sizable profit.