FinTech App Development Cost – All You Need to Know

FinTech App Development Cost

About Fintech Software Development

According to the Global Fintech Software Market research: The Global Fintech Market was valued USD 5504.13 Billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 23.58% during the forecast period.

The FinTech sector which includes retail banking, insurance, payment systems, eCommerce and many other areas requiring proper Fintech Software are growing in an exponential direction in the financial sector segment. 

The term FinTech was originally used to describe the technology employed at back-end systems of established financial institutions, however over the years it has evolved, and is now used for various sectors and industries such as education, retail banking, fundraising and nonprofit and investment management which use specialized software and algorithms to carry out financial operations and processes. 

With time, the scope of the FinTech software and applications has grown; start-ups have an opportunity to create inclusive disruptive financial solutions to cater to the unbanked population of India. Some examples of creating financial assistance include crowdfunding, Peer-to-Peer lending and immediate loans. 

When considering FinTech software development, you need to know exactly what the agenda and goal of the service is and who your audience is to get an idea of how much your FinTech App development cost will be. 

[What Is Fintech Software And Why You Should Invest In It?]

Contents:

  1. Key Fintech App Properties 
  2. Key Properties To Keep In Mind While Building A Fintech App
    • Secure Fintech Software
    • Fast-processing Fintech Software Development
    • Easy-to-use Fintech Software
    • Personalized Fintech Software
  1. App Development Costs
  2. Factors That Affect App FinTech App Development Cost
    • App Development Process
    • Discovery
    • Prototyping & Design
    • Development
    • QA Testing
    • Deployment
    • Deployment
    • Maintenance And Upkeep
    • Type Of FinTech Software or App You’re Building
  3. Optimizing app development costs

Key Properties To Keep In Mind While Building A Fintech App

Once you’ve conducted your market research – know who your target audience is, what problem you are trying to solve and what features you may want to include in your app, you need to find a FinTech software development company who can fulfill your requirements. 

The purpose of the product determines its properties and therefore the FinTech app development cost. 

You need a team of expert developers who have experience building apps for this sector. One way to go about it is by checking basic traits like time management, ability to organize the FinTech development process and provide their customer with adequate communication  

[Looking for a FinTech software development company?]

Important FinTech App Properties 

Secure Fintech Software

According to The State Of Application Security Report by Immuniweb: 100% of the mobile applications contain at least 1 security vulnerability of a medium risk, 97% have at least 2 medium or high-risk vulnerabilities. 

It’s essential that a developer incorporates the best security functions to minimise the risk of hacking and increase data security while building a FinTech App. 

It is also important for your Fintech App Developers to align the product with the relevant regulations and security standards or you may end up having to rework the whole app after it’s built due to legal compliance issues. 

Fast-processing FinTech Software Development

A common characteristic in upcoming FinTech software development apps/software is: they are designed to challenge the traditional financial systems and service providers by creating innovative disruptive financial solutions. 

Your Fintech Software Development process should focus on optimizing data processing solutions so there will be no stops or interruptions. You need to aim to create a financial product that is available in a form of a simple application that works in a speedy manner. 

Easy-to-use FinTech Software

There are 4 types of FinTech users listed by Investopedia:

  • B2B for Banks
  • Banks’ business clients
  • B2C for small businesses
  • Consumers

No matter who your FinTech solution is catering to – the end user is an individual person. You need to ensure your developers design an easy-to-use UI. A well developed UI will allow you to create a system that’s effortless to use and inturn make it easier for your user to start working with it. 

Users want their web and mobile experiences to be on-demand. So, your FinTech software development team must aim to create an on demand rapid, consistent and seamless UX. 

Personalized FinTech Software

Everyone loves a personalized experience! By creating custom personal experiences for users, it will help you as a business to be more competitive. 

Personalization allows you to understand your users path by using user data history and AI/ ML to understand a user’s activities to get a detailed picture on what their specific requirements are. 

By getting a detailed customer profile, you can make the best offer solving problems of the particular person when building a FinTech app for your financial solution.

In-order to start understanding your users, your FinTech app must be built with the right tools to collect appropriate data. For example, it should have cloud-based solutions offering real-time customer journey adaptation, capturing and analyzing the contextual data and other features. 

App Development Costs

There are various factors that affect the FinTech app development costs – the final price tag comes down to things like complexity (in both design and function), platform choice and ongoing maintenance. 

App development in India is relatively cheaper vs American and European prices due to the low of value of the Indian Rupee. “On average, globally, it costs approximately $27,000 to develop an iOS app and $23,000 for Android”.

App Development can be broken down into 3 core areas:

  • Design Features – branding, animations, UX, etc.
  • Technical Features – API and platform integrations, app capabilities, etc.
  • Maintenance – server costs, bug fixes, OS upgrades, etc.

Factors That Affect App FinTech App Development Cost

FinTech app development cost is influenced by many factors such as the type of app, app complexity, features and developers experience. 

Here are some key components to think about that will impact the cost of your app development.

App Development Process

When you are building a FinTech app, you need to have a fairly clear goal in mind. You need a well thought out agenda in mind. 

If you don’t know why you need the app or what it will solve for your business, you may find yourself going astray, which will mean you end up investing money into something that doesn’t meet your business requirement.

Discovery

This stage is the first step of building a FinTech app. It’s understanding and getting a clear picture of the potential of our app. 

In this step, you have to focus on matching the needs of your target audience with the functionality of your FinTech app. 

The pricing at this stage depends largely on the scope of the app and it is relatively light on the development process budget. 

Prototyping & Design

The next step in the development process is to develop the app’s user experience and design the user interface. 

This can be done by creating a prototype. The apps prototype will consist of wireframes (rough representation of app screens). The prototype should function similarly to the final version, with clickable elements and features that let you navigate the app and test its functionality. 

User Journey

The user journey helps you understand how many different screens you may need and how much overall work will need to go into the design process. 

This step generally does not require a lot of time and is the shortest part of the design process and is where you will get an overview of the scope of the app design. 

Next, the user frames are created based on the user journey. This stage can go back and forth based on how you want your app to look. 

Once this step is done, the actual designing of the elements that was laid down in the wireframe starts. Here, your developer has to consider things like colour scheme/theme, animations, fonts and what the general vibe of the app will be. 

User Testing

The next step is to text your prototype. To carry out this step, you will need to observe and track the app as it is tested by various people. 

During the testing, your developers will have to understand the user journey and experience; then evaluate if the app meets the intended agenda. 

A successful prototype does not mean a perfect end product. The prototype typically has further design revisions and bugs that need to be tested and fixed. 

Development

The development of the app is the largest cost associated when it comes to getting an app built. 

Built From Scratch Vs. Existing Projects

A project may be built from scratch or you already have an app developed and it needs work. Based on the bucket you fall into – it’s really important you hand over proper documentation and information to new developers to save a substantial amount of time. 

If you don’t give your new developers a proper download of the previous development details, a lot of time could get wasted in rediscovering the discovery phase – making the billable hours more. 

Backend Code

No matter what kind of app you are building, especially a FinTech app, you need a database to store all the user data. 

You can either opt for off-the-shelf components or get a developer to build the necessary components for you. 

Scalability Issues

The development cost largely depends on the features and components an app has. The complexity of the FinTech app development app directly impacts the cost of development. 

If you are looking to develop dynamic content – it’s more efficient for a developer to build a custom solution for you as off-the-shelf components make it hard to change another dev’s codebase. 

So, scalability is subject to whether you get your app built from scratch or get a developer to work on building a fintech app with specific requirements that your app needs for a great user experience. 

QA Testing

QA testing assures that both the service provider and user gets an app that functions as intended. 

If an app has several bugs or is outdated, it becomes obsolete – this is why quality assurance is essential (QA). 

Once the app gets past the QA stage and you as a business are happy with the end result – it’s finally time to let the app out into the world.

However, the journey of app development does not end here as there will be need for software updates, operating system upgrades and hardware improvements; which means that the app has to be continuously monitored to adapt to a changing technological landscape.

Deployment

Once the app is developed – its time to launch it. The stage doesn’t take much time compared to the main development phases. 

Once the app is deployed – it has to be ready to take on the traffic that will come it’s way. 

Maintenance And Upkeep

Once the app is out on the app store – it needs to be maintained over time. 

As your app gains popularity and has a flood of traffic, it’s important the app is maintained and its upkeep is carried out continuously to meet the users needs and give them a good user experience. 

Type Of FinTech Software or App You’re Building

Complexity Of Features

It’s obvious that – the more complicated the app, the more expensive it will be to develop. 

A complex app implies things like third-party integrations, server-side logic, admin panels, or the use of mobile hardware like Bluetooth or GPS. Each of these has its own cost in terms of both developer time and potential subscription costs in the case of third-party services.

Each layer of new technology adds complexity, time, and requisite knowledge to a project, and thus more cost and depends on the type of app you’re building – whether you’re building a marketplace app, or a stock trading and investing platform or a medical app that uses blockchain.

API Integrations

Your app will most likely need to work with external service providers to provide great functionality to users. 

App developers will need to incorporate APIs to connect apps to payment gateways, messaging platforms, geolocation and many other services.

Machine Learning

FinTech software/apps built with AI and ML algorithms are a great way to predict user actions and create an accurate database on user interactions. By using AI and ML, you can track exactly what your users’ needs are and create a very personalised experience for them – increasing the probability of user loyalty. 

However, coding the ML-powered features makes the development process more complex and increases the overall FinTech app development cost.

Optimizing App Development Costs

An experienced app development team has the right expertise to develop an app that will suit your needs and will know exactly how to go about it and won’t get off track – as a result save you billing hours. 

Here are a few tips to keep your development costs in check. 

Research Product-market Fit

You need to make sure you know who your target audience is and what the aim of the app is. You have to clearly identify what your users’ needs are? What purpose is your app serving for the user? Etc. 

Answering such questions will help you develop an understanding of your user persona and also help when you need to communicate exactly what needs to be developed and what features your developers need to incorporate to make your app a success. 

Streamline Project Management

Once you have a clear picture of the audience, you need to list out essential features your app must have. Think about how you want it to look and feel. 

By having an idea of the mentioned, you can budget your development costs accordingly. You as a business need to set-up a project management framework as every hour invested in developing the app will contribute to the budget. 

Stick To The Scope

Finally, to retain the original estimated app development budget, it’s advisable to stick to the feature set you defined at the prototyping stage.

Any add-ons and new options can be added atl later stages of development when you can assess if you still have the bandwidth to accommodate them.

Building a Fintech app or developing Fintech software can be a challenging task – as a business you need to figure out how much of an impact the development will have on your business and how much time your in-house team can invest in it. 

If you have a small in-house tech team, you may not be equipped with the necessary tools and expertise and outsourcing your development process will be more efficient as you and your team can focus on the main business development and leave the app development to the team of experts. 
[FinTech App Development: How To Build A Great FinTech App]

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