FinTech App Development – What is it and how to create a FinTech app?

FinTech applications are a testament to the development of digital technologies that currently make it easier for users to manage their finances, invest, make payments or save money effectively. Even so, fintech application development is quite complicated and requires many activities and the involvement of a team of specialists in various fields. What does this process look like?

Table of Contents

• What is a Fintech Application?


• Creating Fintech Applications – Who are they intended for?


• FinTech Applications in Practice – Types of Apps


• FinTech Apps and Traditional Banks – Who can win in the Fight for Customers?


• Fintech Application Development – What does it look like?


• Building a FinTech App – is it worth it?


• Fintech Application Development – Summary

What is a Fintech Application?

Fintech applications are web or mobile apps related to financial services. This technology is booming these days, and it is being used on a massive scale. Today, most people make payments and manage their resources using digital solutions. The purpose of these applications is to increase the efficiency of the provision of financial services and minimize their implementation time. What characterizes such programs are especially the following features:

• simplicity to maximize comfort,
• personalization,
• high level of security through data encryption.

All companies that provide their customers with online tools and methods useful in financial management operate in the FinTech sector.

Interestingly, Poland has been recognized as one of the most friendly countries for the development of the financial technology market – it is definitely a reason to be proud.¹ It’s in Poland that BLIK was created, a technology which allows customers to make instant payments or transfers to a phone number. In addition, it allows for other activities, such as withdrawing cash from an ATM without the need to use a card, and paying in stores on the same basis. There are numerous similar solutions in the Polish financial industry, which improve multiple financial activities through FinTech applications. The Polish financial industry attracts skilled professionals and bold innovators, like #AilleronExperts.

Creating Fintech Applications – Who are they intended for?

• For the business world – the FinTech sector offers innovative tools for accounting, factoring, and debt collection.
• For individuals – FinTech enables you to manage your home finances efficiently through adequate savings or attractive offers. Moreover, it also provides the opportunity to take out loans without leaving your home.
• For investors – applications allow them to increase capital by using new technologies (e.g. cryptocurrencies) and allow medium- and long-term transactions on various financial instruments, such as shares and bonds.
• Customers who care about the security of personal data – financial and information security is fundamental in the FinTech industry.

FinTech Applications in Practice – Types of Apps

Although most of us might not realize this, we actually use fintech practically every day. FinTech apps support many areas, including digital banking, digital loans, digital investments, credits, insurance and home budgets.

Digital payments

With digital payments, users can easily transfer digital money to another person’s account from anywhere in the world. Also worth mentioning are automated routine payments, convenient for users who pay fixed fees. In the app, the user can settle all payments without remembering them, as mobile banks offer reminders and automatic repayment of, for example, installments. It is enough that the customer personalizes such a function, and the bank will do the rest.

In addition, it is also possible to pay with a card. You can have such a card not only in a physical form but also on your smartphone or smartwatch, which we usually have with us.

Digital banking

The concept of banking services, which can be conveniently implemented using a mobile phone, is nothing new. Digital banking generally involves the bank issuing its products to the customer completely online.

Loans and credits

Fintech applications are used by banks and private lenders to grant loans, facilitate communication and settle with borrowers. An effective and simple management of credit processes is now possible with the development of technology.

Digital investment

These applications are a big nod to investors from various industries. An app allows them to explore all financial assets and equity markets as well as other financial instruments in order to invest. How does it work in this case? Users get up-to-date information and the necessary data to make informed decisions about their investment plans. They can also use these apps to invest on their own in real-time.

Insurance

Many insurance policies are available, so it’s sometimes difficult to choose the perfect one that would answer our needs. Financial technology facilitates making the right decision – many options from different companies, tailored to our specific situation, can be compared in real-time, anywhere. The possibility of purchasing insurance remotely is convenient for those who don’t want to or, for some reason, cannot physically appear in the given institution.

Apps also provide a multitude of useful options for users, such as speeding up the process of getting a policy through automation or quickly filing insurance claims online.

Household budgets and financial planning of household expenses

Financial planning – not everyone uses it, but everyone should. This allows you to learn positive financial habits and put them into life. Managing household budgets enables you to determine the strengths and weaknesses of financial activities, predict gaps, set priorities and financial goals, and plan for their potential achievement. What’s more, fintech apps give the whole family a chance to monitor the budget so that adults can control and manage the planning, while children can take a good example that will definitely be useful to them someday.

FinTech Apps and Traditional Banks – Who can win in the Fight for Customers?

FinTech offers customers relatively cheap yet innovative solutions by using the latest technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analysis, blockchain or cloud services. These apps are also very easy to use, widely available and personalized. On the other hand, banks guarantee stability and greater resource protection by complying with several regulations.

Banks have long been using FinTech applications and, within them, cutting-edge technology. Nevertheless, FinTechs can introduce these innovative solutions much faster, thus imposing pace on the banks. On the other hand, they try to fight against large institutions for the trust of customers. This makes a fierce competition between them. Customers can benefit from it a lot because technological progress is faster, and they have a wider choice of modern and convenient services.

Fintech Application Development – What does it look like?

How to create a fintech app? Well, that’s quite a complicated thing. However, we’ll explain briefly how this should be done for the project to succeed and pay off in the form of a large number of both retained and new customers.

Select the application area

This step is the basis from which you should start when creating a fintech app. It is worth choosing the areas your app will focus on at the very beginning. Then you can select a niche, examine its needs, and determine what improvements can work well in it.

Ensure compliance with the law

Laws, regulations and rules – there are a lot of them. For a FinTech to function without any complaints and, of course, without violating the law, you should consult a lawyer who will help assess the work of the application from a formal and legal point of view. However, remember that it must be a specialist dealing with the financial sector who has the appropriate experience and knowledge of the law in force in the country where the app will operate.

Determine the target group

A poorly chosen target group will hinder the application development. For this reason, we recommend doing it correctly. It’s worth finding people interested in the idea who will actually use it. How to do that? You must analyze the consumer needs. Here, surveys can be used to ask various types of people. Individuals differ in terms of age, social status or place of residence. The questions in the surveys are structured to find the perfect group and then adapt the idea to their needs.

Create a strategy and FinTech app development plan

The action plan allows your FinTech app to stand out. In this case, it’s worth involving qualified business analysts and product managers – web and mobile development specialists who will help you approach this stage more effectively. With their participation, you will organize the vision of your project, develop a business case and define the essential functions. What benefits will this bring you? First of all, you will reduce the cost of creating the FinTech app and launch it faster onto the market.

The development plan consists, among others, of estimating the costs and time of construction, choosing a development approach or determining the method of creating a prototype. In this phase, you can hire development experts. Their role will be identifying the technology stack and constraints in the project implementation.

Take care of the UI/UX and check how the app works in practice

The UI/UX design is the process of designing the experience that a user would go through when interacting with a company, its services and products. This area is currently one of the most important in implementating projects related to creating fintech apps. It’s because the UX experts dealing with this branch assess the comfort of using an application, its simplicity and its intuitive use. If this aspect isn’t properly refined, the group of its users may significantly narrow – unfortunately, it usually brings a loss of image and, consequently, also financial losses.

How to check if the application works well? Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), i.e., a test version. It contains only the necessary features so that the first users can test the product. MVP gives feedback, which means that you can eliminate errors that would make using the application tricky as early as in the initial period.

Take care of the further development of your app

The app works properly, so why continue to develop it? Such thinking often leads to the collapse of companies. This is due to the product life cycle, which presents itself as follows:

1. introduction,
2. growth,
3. maturity,
4. drop.

It’s extremely important to follow modern financial and technological trends that you apply in the application, giving it a breath of freshness and a slightly new version, attractive to your target group. Additionally, if you don’t invest money or time in developing your app, then the competition will probably overtake you. Therefore, you should constantly monitor the needs of users and respond to them on an ongoing basis.

Building a FinTech App – is it worth it?

To build a FinTech App is a big investment that takes a lot of time and capital, but if well organized, it will certainly bring substantial profits. It’s worth remembering that creativity, understanding the market, appropriate marketing steps, unique value and many other factors count here. However, creating a FinTech App by yourself is no simple thing, because in addition to the above-mentioned criteria, it also requires gathering an experienced team of experts from various fields, which is not easy. Such staff knows how to act in crises, what to expect, what needs consumers have, how to develop the application innovatively, and how to effectively implement and combine all these elements.

Ailleron is a team of professionals from various fields whose knowledge is needed in mobile application development for FinTech. Our company has many years of experience in creating software solutions for FinTechs and improving financial services around the world. The Ailleron Group has already helped more than 200 business clients in as many as 40 countries.

Fintech Application Development – Summary

Demand for the development of FinTech applications is growing and will continue to grow. A report by FinTech Poland shows that in the last 5 years, the number of such business ventures has increased by 79%². Traditional banks also require modern and complex fintech solutions to compete with digital competitors. For this reason, the world’s leading banks are investing in applications, changing internal business processes, and looking for new ways to interact with customers. This is thanks to companies that create and offer innovative solutions. What are these solutions? They include:

• automated digital payment of installments,
• paying with digital money by card or transfer from anywhere in the world,
• obtaining loans remotely,
• using digital tools for accounting, factoring and debt collection,
• convenient management of home finances,
• effective savings,
• increase in capital,
• securing one’s data,
• thoughtful and conscious investment,
• choosing a suitable insurance for yourself and your family,
• obtaining assistance and financial support.

And much, much more! Interestingly, this branch will continue to develop, offering more and more new proposals tailored to the needs and expectations of customers from different segments.

Creating a FinTech App requires commitment and going through many stages. In this case, every detail is important, and the lack of at least one can affect the success of the project. It is also the teamwork of specialists who, acting together, can make this process more effective. Financial profit is crucial for companies, but to achieve it, their priority should be primarily on the needs of users for whom they create FinTech Apps. Therefore, when deciding to create such an app, it’s worth considering their opinion and the experience that will accompany them while using the app.

FAQ:

1. What are FinTech applications?

These are applications designed to help users make various financial choices and transactions. The fintech segment is described as a revolution – and rightly so. It continues to introduce new opportunities in this area through the use of innovative technologies.

2. What is needed for FinTech mobile app development? 

Capital, experience, knowledge, creativity, ideas, specialists, willingness to develop and market research – these are the key issues that determine the effectiveness of the application and ensure the success of the project and its originator.

3.  How to build a fintech app?

When designing an application, you should take into account several stages, including determination of the target group, planning development and activities, establishing customer experiences, and offering them a simple prototype that will make it possible to eliminate errors that appear in the application later.

Sources:

1. https://fintech.gov.pl/en/komunikaty/303-aktualnosci-artykuly/1015-raport-mapa-polskiego-fintechu-2022 [access: 09.11.2023] ↩
2. https://fintechpoland.com/pl/polski-fintech-nadchodzi-kluczowy-moment-dla-sektora/ [access: 09.11.2023] ↩

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