Today, there is a mobile app for almost anything. This is especially true for the finance sector. As more and more people are using Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay, it is essential to stay tuned and know your competition. Just recently a projection was made for 2022 for the number of transactions made using mobile devices to grow by 121 percent and account for 88 percent of all banking transactions. According to Adyen, over 27% of global online transactions are now on mobile devices.
In this blog post, we will talk about the basics of banking apps. After learning why you should create one, there will be a brief development guide and a section on the cost of a banking app. If this is what you are searching for, keep on reading. We will keep it short and sweet.
Why create a banking app?
The answer is obvious. It is just cost-effective and more profitable for banks. How? Just think of costs saved on offices and bank employees. Mobile transactions can be made from anywhere so the need for physical offices decreases.
The cost of customer services can also be reduced almost by half. Save on physical space, and save on employees while app chatbots relieve the burden on the support team and speed up request processing.
But there is another advantage in banking apps. They make less costly human errors.
To keep it short, you need one if you still don’t have one. Here is how.
Short development guide
If you are about the develop a banking app, you need to know everything from UX/UI design to tech stack. In this short guide, I will focus on the concrete question “how to build a banking app?” You may need to consult other sources for a more elaborate description. So, let’s get to business. Here are the steps.
Planning
As with any other app, your banking app faces the challenges of being accepted in the market. And to do that, you need to know what the market offers. It’s helpful to pose some questions at the start, such as:
- Who are my competitors?
- What do they offer?
- Is there a market gap I can fill?
- What does the customer want?
MVP development
Minimum Viable Product or MVP may scare you at first. Seems too technical but it is not. To put it in ordinary words, it is the process when you test the initial product in the market and make adjustments according to the feedback of early adopters. So, let’s divide this idea into parts.
You need to test the initial version of the product in the market. To do that, you need to have this initial version. This means that you need to outsource and have a basic idea of what you want.
Once the product is ready, you need to release it and collect feedback.
After you know what customers like or dislike, you can make adjustments and enter the market with a corrected version. You will save both time, money, and other resources if you build an MVP first.
Release
After a thorough MVP, your app is ready for release. At this stage, you need to plan API (Application Software Interface which is a way for two different apps to exchange data with each other). For a banking app, this is a must to have and your users might find it beneficial.
Maintenance
App maintenance takes nearly as many resources as MVP development or any other stage of app design. Take care to fix whatever pesky bugs you have and ensure the best user experience.
How much does a banking app cost?
It’s difficult to give you a ready-made answer. But if you know the factors that affect the cost, you might have an idea before you even start. Here are the factors affecting banking app costs:
- App complexity
- Tech stack used
- Location of the development team.
Naturally, the more features you have, the higher the cost of your app will be. So, you need to find a mid-point where your app needs and your budget meet.
While the tech stack is also a factor, the location of the development team plays a more important role since prices vary from place to place and the difference is huge. For example, if you outsource in the US, only the MVP will cost you $100K. MVP development in India will be $26K.
Of course, you will prefer the lower price. Does this mean you will compromise on quality? The answer is ‘not always.’ However, you need to know your development team very well before you decide to assign such a big project. Past clients, for example, are a source of information about the quality of work of the development team. Just remember, that this will bring you money or take money from you. It’s worth investigating their portfolio and previous work history.
Wrapping up
In this short blog post, I tried to sum up the main points you need to pay attention to while thinking about building a banking app. This is just an overview and you need to research more on the type of tech stack used, MVP development, etc. To help you in your search, here is a link to a development guide to a banking app and a link to a development guide to a mobile wallet app.
