For your fintech startup, it all begins and ends with software. As the main asset of any fintech, it must be of high quality and have no critical issues to guarantee the success of your venture.
From the technical point of view, fintech applications always require attention. Even a tiny error (for example, in financial transactions) may bring an avalanche of disastrous consequences. Therefore, there must be well-written requirements for security, fault tolerance, and confidentiality.
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It may seem not obvious at first glance, but tech aspects eventually affect end users, if only indirectly. They influence the application’s performance, resilience, user experience, and, eventually, user retention—the major performance metric for any IT business.
All users, both new and returning, expect to have a satisfying experience in your app. Therefore, it’s your priority to arrange an easy-to-understand, straightforward flow while complying with regulations.
Today, we share six main aspects you should keep in mind before starting the development process. Knowing these, you will be able to create a reliable fintech solution that is up to market standards and user expectations.
6 Things to Think About Before Kicking off Fintech App Development
Architecture of a Fintech App
Even if you are planning to launch a minimum viable product (MVP) first, it’s reasonable to make it scalable that early. In this way, you will prepare for future growth in advance.
However, don’t get carried away with engineering. This is because by overcomplicating your software architecture, you will only cause additional expenses. You may not need those, really. If you are thinking of building an infrastructure to be useful at some point in the future, it’s better to reject this idea. Otherwise, you may spend time and money without getting the results you might have expected. Meanwhile, you could focus on other, more relevant tasks that would ensure faster time to market.
Finally, your architecture should be flexible enough so that further expansions will go smoothly while still keeping it as simple as possible.
User Experience
Fintech solutions that are in demand are the ones that provide an easy way to solve an existing business problem. Those are designed to make business processes faster, less costly, more efficient, and simpler.
For example, PayPal facilitated payment procedures by requesting only the recipient’s email from users to perform the transaction. Stripe, on the other hand, excluded the issue with payment integrations by providing fintech businesses with an all-in-one suite for payments. The reason why such brand names are so well-known today is that they managed to provide a novel and valuable, yet satisfying, user experience.
For this reason, before creating an app, remember that it should be problem-solving as well as convenient. But to make it this way, you should arrange for continuous work on user experience (UX) improvements with the help of UX researchers.
Security
Security is an issue that developers should never neglect. Whatever stage your project is at, security should remain at the top of your agenda. This is especially the case when it comes to data migration and software updates.
Therefore, be sure to take the following measures:
- 24/7 security monitoring
- Comprehensive activity logging
- Data encryption
- Anti-fraud automation
- Additional verifications
After all, a well-made fintech software product would have not only a polished design and provide a seamless UX but also follow the best security practices.
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Third-Party Components
There’s a variety of external components that can help you launch a top-notch app to the market without reinventing the wheel. In fact, some of those, such as biometrics, robotic process automation (RPA), image recognition, real-time analytics, and payment gateways, may allow for a faster launch and better quality of the app.
However, every component you add must be well-adjusted to the entire infrastructure you put it in. Usually, external frameworks and libraries cover versatile use cases, so your job is to adjust them to your specific needs. Opt out of unused functionality by removing it from the app. This should allow the third-party components to perform to their fullest extent. Remember also that your app must remain lightweight and work fast, without consuming too many resources.
Compliance
Today, many fintech apps suffer from money laundering and other types of fraud aimed at sanctions evasion. For example, in 2021, payment fraud attempts in fintech increased by 70%, a whopping figure to be sure.
At any rate, you need to be prepared for fraud attempts in advance. Besides the aforementioned security measures, you must take care of your compliance strategy. Make sure you regularly complete audits, check software for security issues, and pass certifications.
A reliable fintech app must ALWAYS comply with regulations, so hire an outside legal consultant to monitor changing federal and state regulations and proactively respond to them.
Technology Upgrades and Maintenance
Perhaps the last, yet equally essential, measure you should take to keep your app’s performance and security at a high level is to regularly update its frameworks and languages. For this purpose, you should always work with the tech stack. For example, by refactoring software infrastructure, you can cope with growing volumes of data (such as transactions) more effectively. Moreover, test automation may help you make the core more stable and save you from spending excessive time and money on regression testing while preserving high quality.
Meanwhile, as your fintech app evolves, tech debt may appear in the process. In fact, it appears and accumulates slowly when the team spends little to no time on tech improvements and resolving compatibility issues between components.
Tech debt limits scalability so that you can’t deliver new features and updates seamlessly. To keep this from happening, make regular tech revisions to ensure stable updates and extend the life cycle. Only in this way, will you be able to continuously meet expectations.
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Build a Fintech App Using These Tips
By following the tips we give in the article, you can build a fintech app that corresponds to market and user demands throughout its life cycle. Great software is a sure way to increase your bottom line. To achieve this, you need to continuously control your app’s quality. Always remember that timely identification of tech issues guarantees a high return on investments.
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