Fintech app help banks and financial institutions automate the delivery of financial services. These include digital payments, loan management, credit acquisition and repayment. Most importantly, these apps have made online banking and financial functions highly secure and private with features like biometric verification and 2-factor authentication. Considering how rapidly these financial apps are contributing to the overall business ecosystem, investing in fintech app development emerges as a viable technical business domain and a lucrative decision.
If you too are planning to create one, here is a detailed guide on how to make a fintech app from scratch in 8 steps with development inspiration, important features and fintech app ideas.
Top Fintech App Examples for Development Inspiration
- PayPal
- Square
- Moneylion
- Chime
- Coinbase
- Wealthfront
- Brigit
How to Make a Fintech App from Scratch
If you are a non-techie, here is the quickest answer on how to create a fintech app.
1. Decide a fintech app category and niche.
The success of a great app venture lies in two factors. Firstly, an epic idea that adds value for users, secondly, the right development execution.
So, for the idea part, here top 7 niches and categories based on most successful fintech apps on the Google Play and App store:
- Decentralized apps and crypto exchanges
- Online investment apps with options for stock and bitcoin
- Expenditure and savings calculators
- Personal finance and budget management apps
- NFT marketplaces and exchanges
- Crowdfunding and financial liquidity apps
- Digital payment and cash-back apps
Once you have picked an idea, think of your target audience and the ideal users. You can also do a quick competitor analysis and see if similar apps exist. If yes, look at how successful they are, their download rates and the ratings and reviews they have received. You can also look at the comments of the users and see if there is something that most users have demanded. This means it would be a gap and so your fintech app can fill it and capitalize on it.
2. Write a business plan.
This app venture requires immense mental concentration and development efforts. But before you start developing or even interview a potential developer, you need to create a document and development roadmap. You can call it your rough business plan that you’ll look up to during the whole development process.
In your business plan, write down the budget you have allocated for app development and for app’s marketing pre and post-launch. write down the revenues you have estimates and target no. of downloads.
3. List down the features you want to add.
While you can always decide which features you wish to add to your fintech app, here are some important ones that almost every app has to maintain the core functionality, security and privacy:
- View account balance (portfolio, stock and crypto assets)
- Investment-related features
- 2 Factor authentication, OTP and biometric verification
- End to End encryption for data security
- Personalized alerts via push notifications
- Loyalty programs, cash back points, rewards, gift vouchers and discounts
- Multiple online deposit systems
Now because Android and iOS app development have adapted quite modern approaches, your developer doesn’t really have to code all the features in the app’s back-end. you can integrate APIs from apps such as PayPal, Dashlane and Twilio to strengthen the security, and then place your core focus on the basic functionality of your app.
4. Create a development strategy
Now you have enough technical knowledge of the requirements of your fintech app. Once you have sorted which features you want to add, it’s ideal to create a development strategy. For your development strategy, think about the platform or device you want to introduce the app for. For example, it could be an Android app, or an iOS app or a cross-platform app with similar functionality on both operating systems.
Secondly, write down your preferred development completion date, and launching date. Now take this strategy whenever you are up for interviewing the team of developers or outsourcing your project to a development company.
5. Hire a development team.
You have several options when it comes to the hiring arrangements. You can hire freelancers and create a team. Or, you can outsource the app development project to a company on a fixed price. The third option is to hire developers on staff augmentation basis, then pay them either subscription charges or hourly rates.
When hiring a development team, focus on their location, technical expertise, years of experience and strength of portfolio.
6. Decide app milestones, and deadlines.
With the right team, you also need the right management of your project. To ensure you achieve your development and launching goals in time, divide different stages of your app development in milestones. Then associate a deadline with each milestone and strictly monitor the completion of each. In fact, report timely when you notice errors and want something to be added.
7. Test the app with QA
Thoroughly test the app for performance and navigation, security and data retention, and technical factors. Check if the digital payment options are working efficiently. Check different features like sign up and sign in, guest sign up and 2 FA. Also assess if the app is returning right responses to the queries. The data fetched should be accurate.
The second measure you can take is distributing the MVP of your app in community and ask real users for feedback on user experience. if you notice a common negative review, it’s recommended you fix before launch.
8. Launch the app.
Once you have battle-tested the app for quality standards and worked on user feedback, it’s time to deploy it and publish for users to download. Store approvals can take time. Google Play, however is faster than App store. Combined, both can take an average of 1 month.
When publishing, make sure to provide the right description of your app, add screenshots and provide necessary information about payment plans if your app is a premium one.
