In the era of a galloping digitalization, more and more industries are doing their best to benefit from the digital transformation. The financial and banking industries are not an exception here and fintech companies are constantly developing new, innovative solutions that would address the needs of their increasingly demanding customers.
In this article, we provide you with tips and best practices on how to design, and then develop, a successful mobile banking app that will meet the market demand.
Trends in Mobile Banking Apps
Why develop a mobile banking app? Well, the reason for this is quite obvious; it’s the dynamic growth of the industry and the increasing potential of mobile banking apps. Let’s take a look at recent statistics:
- The total revenue in the mobile app market is predicted to reach $437.80 billion by the end of 2022, which is a 6.58% growth compared to 2021. It is also estimated that in-app purchases will grow to $202.90 billion. The next prediction is that the market will continue growing to $565 billion by 2026.
- After the COVID-19 pandemic, 71% of U.S. consumers planned to open an online account. 52% of them were more likely to do it than they had been before the pandemic.
- 97% of millennials use mobile banking applications and 89% of consumers use mobile banking apps for various purposes regarding personal finances. There is also an increase observed in all age groups.
- 6 out of every 10 mobile users prefer to use mobile applications over mobile websites.
- 90% of people use mobile banking apps to check their account balance and 79% to view recent transactions.
- 94% of mobile banking customers use online banking platforms at least once a month.
To put it simply, these numbers indicate that trust in mobile banking is constantly increasing, especially after the 2020 pandemic that forced customers to limit offline meetings and switch to digital solutions. Along with the next lockdowns, mobile banking app users started to appreciate the access to online services operating 24/7. This naturally led to the development of new market trends and customer expectations that will determine the shape of modern mobile banking apps in the upcoming years.
Ideas for great fintech apps
Fintech is an umbrella term for all modern, very often innovative banking and financial apps. There are many areas in which you can search for your great idea for a mobile fintech app. This includes both banking operations management applications and solutions dedicated to casual users – to see that, just explore the potential of:
- data processing apps
- money transfer applications
- splitting costs apps
- chatbots
- voice assistants
- blockchain & cryptocurrency-related applications.
For even more inspiration, check out the Liv app launched by Emirates NBD, the first digital-only bank in the UAE. The target of the app is the Millennials who use it for splitting bills with their friends on social media. This is a great example of a modern app perfectly tailored to the market needs.
How to build a mobile banking app?
So, what are our top 5 tips on how to develop a successful mobile banking app? As industry experts, we have already developed dozens of mobile fintech applications and we’re able to provide you with the most practical and relevant advice. Let’s catch a glimpse of how to build modern, reliable fintech and banking apps that have a potential to rock the market.
Focus on easy navigation
Easy and intuitive navigation is one of the critical features of any mobile banking app. That is so because you use this kind of app in a plethora of situations that require quick access to your funds. This means that all its major features should be easily accessible and a user should never need to waste their time searching for them. Intuitive naming plays an important role in the industry as well. Although banking and financial terms might be quite complicated, the names within your app should help a user to easily perform actions of their choice. After all, it’s all about the money they have and how it flows rather than “banking products and services” or account numbers.
Ensure security
Security is one of the biggest concerns in the modern Internet and one of the places that require a very unique approach to it are privacy and finance related systems. Financial applications must be equipped with relevant safety protection measures against scammers and fraudulent activities. The research reveals that 77% of customers who have not yet used mobile banking payment methods list security as the primary concern. If you wish to succeed in creating your mobile banking app, pay attention to this, not only implementing the adequate security measures, but also making user feel sure that their transactions are secure. Note that depending on the market, there are regulations and norms that help you ensure this — just to name a few, PSD2 normalizes the protection standards for payments in Europe, while AML (or: anti-money-laundry) norms and KYS (know-your-customer) regulations limit the fraudulent circulation of money, because they make sure that the other side of transaction is verified.
So, how to ensure the safety of your mobile banking app? There are a few solutions that you can implement to improve it, such as:
- strong passwords
- two-factor authentication
- storing only necessary business data
- limiting payment options
- hiding typed credit card data, such as CVC numbers
- using physical user metrics authentications of fingerprints, voice, appearance, behaviour.
Provide great UX via amazing UI Design
Although almost every aspect of your app creates user experience, an outstanding UI is the next valor of a successful mobile banking app. An appealing, modern design of the application is simply a must to earn users’ loyalty, limiting the customer drop ratio in the longer term as the utilitarian aspects of the app start playing a more and more important role. When designing your app, remember to provide it with the dark mode option, as the users’ preference to use dark mode over light mode is 50/50, so these two modes are equally important.
Also, successively building and implementing a design system from the very beginning of the app development is crucial. It allows not only to ensure a coherent user experience as the complexity increases over time, it also lets you scale up the application while keeping the development pace.
If you wish to learn more about UI/UX and good banking app design, feel free to check out our article: What is User Experience (UX) and why should it be important to you?.
Focus on 360 service
The main purpose of building a mobile banking application is to provide customers with the same (or better!) quality. So, it is a must to deliver a number of functionalities that will compensate for the lack of physical contact with a bank’s customer service.
For example, it is estimated that chatbots can save the banking industry $7.3 billion in annual customer service costs by 2023. This is only one of many options for providing online customer service that will be appreciated by customers and cost-efficient for banking institutions. The other ideas are the possibility to order new cards, change limits, or open the account fully online.
Allow personalization
Last but not least, there are a few ways to spice up your mobile banking app and make it attractive to customers. Personalization and additional functionalities expected by your target audience can significantly boost user satisfaction and your revenue.
The examples of additional features appreciated by modern mobile banking app users are:
- cashback
- push notifications
- expense trackers
- online booking
- bill-splitting
- personalized offers.
As personalization can help to increase your revenue by up to 15%, it’s worth putting some effort into analyzing what your customers actually need and using this potential to the maximum.
Let’s sum it up!
Are you interested in mobile banking app development? Feel free to contact us. As industry experts who have already delivered a number of successful fintech applications, we will support you in the entire development process - starting with the idea and ending with the market launch and ongoing maintenance.
