In this blog, we are going to share the ABC of banking application development. At Syndicode, we have designed and developed online banking app solutions that require exceptional code quality, compliance with informational security standards, and smooth performance.
So Alex needs to open a bank account.
He checks the banker’s hours, calls in sick at work, knowing it will probably take him the entire day to wait in the line, and…
Wait a minute.
Alex doesn’t have to do that. All he really needs is to take his smartphone and download an app. He’ll get an account ready to use at the bank of his choice in a matter of seconds. It’s that easy!
No wonder the total number of mobile banking app users is projected to exceed 2.5 billion by 2024. Moreover, the NVCA report indicates that the total investment received by mobile banking app development startups in 2021 was over $55 billion and is growing steadily.
So, it’s definitely worth it to dig into the fintech mobile solutions market. The question now is, how to make a banking app?
There are several steps to take to ensure a profitable solution. In this guide, we’ll walk you through:
Sounds good? Read on.
First, what is the meaning of mobile banking? It is a service allowing you to make financial transactions on your mobile device. It can involve receiving user activity information, purchasing goods and services, sending money to another account, etc.
The benefits of mobile banking app development for a customer are quite obvious:
Business benefits of building a banking app include:
A bank may want to build a banking app since it enables them to:
Syndicode uses advanced technologies and innovative approaches to web development. We have well-established processes that help us provide appealing, intuitive, and secure solutions that help users solve their pain points.
We have vast experience in setting up secure communication between independent entities. In our recent project, Swift Comply, we used Redis pub/sub within a custom network, making the connection invisible to the rest of the world without custom-built APIs and extra login management.
The same project has spacial data processing feature developed by Syndicode’s team from scratch. It uses zip codes to calculate distances to service providers and displays vendors within the specified radius of the user’s location. The software’s price management tool works based on that feature, too.
Another client got a custom text recognition tool that uses Google Cloud Natural Language AI. The app can read a user’s business card and automatically fills in the required data into their profile.
We also have experience in creating solutions that prevent access from unauthorized individuals even if they have the credentials.
We are a value-driven company that helps clients achieve their goals most efficiently. With our remote employees mainly located in Eastern Europe, the cost of our services is about 50-60% lower than that of the US developers. All Syndicode’s employees have an excellent command of English, and we manage all the hiring and staff maintenance work.
The mobile banking development process can be broken down into the following steps:
The research stage is often referred to as the discovery phase. Its goal is to develop a shared understanding of the project objectives, functionality, and bottlenecks between the client and the development team.
Before you can build a banking app, it’s essential to gather facts about the banking market dynamics as it affects the trends in banking apps. Market research will help you avoid issues and identify possibilities.
For online market research, the following tools can be helpful:
Don’t limit yourself to online methods, as offline research lets you access primary information sources directly. The most widespread methods of market research are:
As a result of your market research, you should be able to answer the following questions:
The answer to “how to make a banking app?” partially lies in your competitor’s solutions. You need to know your competition to map the market position of your application and its advantages. First, prepare a list of the main competitors in your niche. As of this writing, the best mobile banking apps are:
Review their features and outline their strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, you may want to identify your direct and indirect competitors.
Thus, the main direct competitors of Ally are the Bank of America iOS app, Capital One, Discover, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. They are of a similar size, have similar audiences and offers, and use the same promotion and distribution channels.
Ally’s indirect competitors are mobile banking platforms like Chime, Varo, Revolut, etc., credit unions, and digital wallets because they share the same audience but offer different sets of services.
Also, pay attention to industry trends. Currently, mobile banking development solutions tend to:
Before you can answer “how to make a banking app?”, you should find out who you are making it for. The mobile banking audience is vast since it covers people from 16 to 70 years old and above.
However, their behaviors and needs differ. Thus, the audience below 24 mostly uses banking apps for purchases, paying school fees, and transferring small amounts. At the same time, this is the largest portion of mobile banking app users.
A mature audience turns to mobile banking for paying bills, cash flow control, medium and large amounts transactions, and so on.
To avoid spreading thin and to build a banking app to generate revenue, you should determine your ideal customer. Identify the most profitable segment of the target audience and analyze their age, gender, income, occupation, and any other characteristics they may have in common.
Your goal is to make a clear picture of your potential clients and explore their personalities, interests, and needs. Afterward, you will focus your efforts on catering to their specific wants. As your application progresses, your customer base may change. So, revisit your Ideal Customer Profile regularly to add new details or even create a secondary ICP.
Prototyping allows you to test a software product’s functionality, design, performance, and, ultimately, technical feasibility. Depending on the complexity to be tested, prototyping can involve anything from basic 2D sketching to full-scale MVP development.
Creating a prototype generally takes several steps. You can complete the routine once you have verified the correct work and feel of the product or its part. The steps are as follows:
After successful prototyping, you will have the banking app concept clarified and cut all the unnecessary features and elements.
As stated earlier in this post, mobile banking apps are most often used to check one’s balance, view transaction history, pay bills, and transfer money. Therefore, the core mobile banking app features are the following:
You will also need some unique features to highlight your banking solution and enhance the user experience. Here is an example of good-to-have features from popular banking apps:
A banking app’s UI/UX design must match the user’s needs with banking capabilities in an easy-to-use way. It must also match the owner’s business and marketing strategy to ensure consistency. There are several Do’s for a banking app design that will help you create a winning solution:
How to make a banking app that has an excellent design? Don’t hesitate to use the iterative approach. Start simple, collect feedback, and move forward by implementing new elements. A/B testing will help you learn how to build a banking app that brings the most value to your customers.
Remember that personalization is a must and many banks leverage it using their client’s personal IDs. Also, developing a mobile banking application in 2022, you should plan for the rise of alternative UI such as VR and voice processing.
It takes a lot of time and knowledge to build a banking app. Not only do you need experienced developers, but you also have to ensure they are managed properly.
If you choose to do it on your own, here is a list of things you should prepare before starting mobile banking development:
A project timeline will also help avoid scope creep. Next, you should allocate tasks to your team members and monitor the deadlines.
Alternatively, you can hire a project manager to plan and coordinate the mobile app development process. If you outsource the development or engage a dedicated development team, these services can come with PM assistance by default.
Choosing the right technology can cut development time and boost performance and maintenance. Depending on the specifics of your banking solution, the chosen operating system, and features, you can choose from the following technologies:
Your development team should have experience building solutions similar to your project and should be easy to work with. That means their skillset, values, and approaches will differ depending on the project. However, there are several attributes that all good teams share:
You have several options for engagement models — turnkey development, outsourcing, and using IT consulting services. Each model has its benefits and limitations, so you should carefully consider your expectations and capabilities.
| Turnkey development | Outsourcing | IT consulting |
|---|---|---|
| Full responsibility on the development team Fixed price Project management on the vendor’s side Short time to market Better cost control Limited possibility to make changes after the project has started | Full responsibility on the development team Hourly-paid basis Project management negotiated Short time to market Limited visibility Potential miscommunication issues | Shared responsibility Hourly-paid basis Management on your side You need to have a development team available Increased security Company knowledge is retained |
Quality assurance specialists should be a part of your development team to ensure that the new banking app meets all the quality requirements. While QA goes after development in this guide, it’s actually recommended that QA engineers join the project as early as possible. This way, they can make sure the project requirements are testable, prevent security issues, and eliminate bugs as soon as they appear.
If your team follows Agile practices, the developers will perform basic testing of every unit upon its completion. However, if you fully rely on developers for testing and spare QA, you risk ending up with a product with its parts not working well together.
After successfully testing your app, it’s necessary to check if it complies with all the requirements of the target distribution service, such as Google Play or App Store. Your development team should prepare release notes and perform a soft launch. If everything looks good, you can finalize the launch of your banking solution and go full mode on marketing.
After release, you’ll start receiving feedback from the first users. New bugs may appear as the emulated environment used for testing cannot fully replicate real-life conditions. Your development team should be ready to detect and fix emerging issues immediately.
You should start marketing long before you build a banking app to have a pool of warm audience ready to try out the new product. Since you have done the research back when planning your app, you can also use this information for a marketing strategy.
From our experience, some of the most effective ways to promote a mobile solution are
We recommend you plan far in advance and leave yourself enough time to deal with any delays before the app’s hard release. Distribution services are particular about application quality, especially App Store, and the review process can be time-consuming.
Another effective way to drive customers to download an app is to place a smart banner on the bank’s website. Attracting visitors to a website first costs over 80% less than driving them straight to Google Play or App Store.
Mobile application development for the banking industry comes with unique challenges in the technical and regulatory domains. Here are some of them:
Tech challenges
Regulatory challenges
At this point, you probably want to know the cost of banking mobile app development, do you? The total development cost consists of the following factors:
Generally speaking, the cost of banking app development can range between $100K–$500K and more.
Banking apps are a lucrative niche worth conquering. With the right amount of research and an experienced team, you can build a banking app that opens new communication channels with customers and reduces the operating costs of the financial institution it serves. Hopefully, this blog post gave you an idea regarding how to make a banking app.
Syndicode can provide you with expert developers, designers, business analysts, and other specialists to create an excellent mobile banking app for the platform of your choice. We are a custom software development provider and a digital partner assisting you at every step of banking app development, from initial research to development and post-launch support.
A mobile banking application makes banking services available through a mobile device. It allows customers to conduct bank transactions such as fund transfers, checking account balances, making payments, etc. The main benefit of banking apps is 24/7 access from any location, provided there is an internet connection. They can also be customized to suit the user’s needs better, automate recurring transactions, and keep the user informed about the state of their balance, deals, or new services through push notifications.
The popularity of top mobile banking software came from their ability to provide services 24/7. They also have a chatbot or another means of instant customer support. These apps are also very secure and use multi-factor authentication to regain authority if the account owner forgets their password. Many existing banking apps have an in-built QR code scanner that provides a fast way to perform a transaction. And they always keep the user informed about the latest activity, changes to terms, or news through push notifications. The latter can be customized or turned off. If you’re planning to build a banking app, consider these features as must-haves and brainstorm for additional functions that will highlight your solution.
Mobile banking provides access to banking services through a mobile device — a smartphone or a tablet. To use it, one should install an application. Internet banking or Online banking can be carried out on any device that is connected to the internet. It doesn’t require an app installation. Mobile banking solutions offer more security and can send push notifications to keep users updated about changes in their balance and other information. They can also be connected to other money management tools. Internet banking can provide more in-depth info about one’s bank accounts.
The exact duration depends on the project size and whether you start from scratch or upgrade an existing solution. Other factors that affect the development timeline are the team composition, experience, tech stack, the targeted operating system, and how well the requirements were determined before the project started. For an average project, it may take 6—9 months and more to build a banking app MVP from scratch. However, you should consult your software development vendor to get an individual estimate for your case. They will also explain how to make a mobile banking app with the least investment.
The first mobile banking app appeared in the UK in 2011. The Royal Bank of Scotland developed it for Apple iPhones. Since then, mobile banking has been overtaking the traditional forms of banking.