Mobile Banking App Development – Key Features and Development Process

Gone are the days when you had to visit the bank for every big and small task like money withdrawal, deposits, investments, and loan applications. The concept of mobile banking app development has allowed users to manage all those tasks with their smartphones. Banks, finance organizations, or even loan lending companies, everyone is leveraging banking applications to manage their finance operations easily. 

Gartner predicts that the mobile banking and investment services market will surpass $761 billion by 2025. Moreover, the banking app development market will grow at 11.9% annually! Hence, it is obvious that banking apps are benefiting customers and enterprises alike. But what benefits will it offer to your organization? And how can you develop a banking app tailored to your business needs?

Explore answers to many such questions in our article below!

What is a Mobile Banking App, and Why To Invest in Banking App Development?

The mobile banking app is an excellent fintech software development service that enables banks to provide all their services on a dedicated mobile platform. A mobile banking app allows users to manage their accounts, lend loans, manage their credit limits, and even transfer funds to other accounts while sitting remotely.

Not just that, they can even pay all their bills and can scan the QR codes to pay for their shopping and meals using the same app. A dedicated mobile banking app can do things like loan calculators, EMI calculators, investment planning, and even stock investment. 

Well, we now know the basics about a mobile banking app. But why do you need to invest in mobile banking app development? Moreover, are you the first one, or are many others investing in banking app development? 

Certainly not! As per trusted sources, the mobile banking app development market will surpass $1.35 billion by 2028. The market was already valued at $692.5 in the year 2021. However, the surge in mobile users and the global pandemic further accelerated this growth. 

But, the question remains: Why are businesses investing in banking app development? Here’s the answer to it!

• For better customer engagement.
• Quick and personalized mobile services that contribute to better brand value.
• To compete in the ever-changing market.
• To expand their business and generate more revenue.
• To make greater profits by automating the tasks and reducing the hiring cost.
• For better security, data analysis, and accuracy.
• For going paperless and becoming environmentally friendly.

A study claims mobile banking is much more cost-effective for banks than ATM transactions. Mobile banking transactions only cost 0.08 cents, but ATM transactions cost about 0.85 cents. 

Read More: Role of Mobile Apps in Banking and Financial Industries

What Features Make a Top-Notch Mobile Banking Application?

Statista states that users leverage online banking apps for several reasons. To name a few, we have:

• Account management
• Bill payments
• Transferring funds to other accounts
• Opening a new account
• Exploring the best investment options
• Accessing various loan options offered by the banks

Hence, you must implement features that help the users to access those kinds of services. Besides that, you should also try to implement some unique features that add value to your brand and lures more users.

Bank Account Details

Enable your customers to manage their accounts through their smartphones. The users can access information, including their bank account number, branch name, email ID, contact number, and total account balance.

They can even update their basic info or set credit limit using the same module. The access to automatic payment dedication can also be turned off using the account management feature. 

Fund Transfer

Another useful feature of a top-notch mobile banking app is fund transfer. You must enable users to send/receive payments from other accounts directly through their mobile apps. The users can also send payment requests to other people using their unique ID or contact number. 

Bill Payments

Enable users to pay their electricity, landline, internet, or gas bills using their banking app. You can also offer them loyalty points or rewards on the bills paid through the banking app. That will lure more users towards your app and entice existing ones.

Customer Support

Customer support is an essential feature of every app, and the mobile banking app is no exception. You must offer a dedicated support portal to your users that they can use to lodge complaints and resolve their issues. 

You can even implement a chatbot into your mobile banking app to automate customer support operations. Today, NLP-driven chatbot (natural language processing)  has taken over human resources by resolving user queries quickly and in a personalized manner. 

Rather than analyzing the words, the NLP-driven chatbot analyzes the intent behind the message and offers the best possible answer. Hence, ask your app development partner for chatbot development services for your banking app. 

Loan Offers

There are times when a customer seeks loans for different purposes. Hence, by implementing smart AI algorithms, you can analyze that perfect time and approach your users with exciting loan offers. An AI-driven banking app will help you target each customer with a personalized loan offer that they cannot deny. 

Mutual Funds/Stocks

Today’s digital era is about quick mobile services, so why should investment be kept away from it? Hence, you must offer mutual fund and stock investment functionalities in your banking app to help users with an easy investment process. They can explore all the available options, beginning with their investment journey. 

Read More: 12 Best Mobile Banking App Features That Shouldn’t Be Missed

Advanced Features

The features mentioned above are essential for every banking app. However, what’s the point when you cannot distinguish your app from other competitors? That’s where these advanced features come into play!

Spend Trackers

Spend tracking is one of the prominent features that can set your banking app apart from others. You can use various smart AI algorithms to track the spending patterns of your users.  Then, you can suggest the best possible ways to save their income. 

You can even recommend them various investment options and schemes that ensure a bright future. Your users will be delighted to receive such personalized recommendations from your brand. 

Fingerprint Login

The concept of the long sign-up process was long gone. Today’s era is all about quick services, and fingerprint log-in is one feature that promotes prompt and digital service. You can enable users to set their fingerprint as the password to eliminate mundane password entries. 

The passwords are easy to guess and are prime to online thefts. Hence, you would not want your user’s data to leak as a banking company. So, you should also implement fingerprint login for data protection.  

Loan and Investment Calculator

Offering EMI calculators and investment tools can greatly enhance your app’s usage. Those kinds of calculators inform the users about their EMI calculation and allow them to set their time and principal amount for a stable EMI payment. Similarly, an investment calculator allows users to explore various options for easy and timely investments that yield better results in the future. 

Smartwatch Access

Finally, we have smartwatch access as our advanced feature for your custom banking app. These days, nearly everyone has a smartwatch that enables them to pick up calls and track their calories. So, why limit your banking services from these smartwatches? 

Hence, as a leading mobile banking app development company, we suggest you offer smart notifications over your user’s smartwatch.

They can receive notifications of loans, debits/credits, and even investments on their smartwatches. Besides, you can even enable them to transact using their smartwatch. However, ensure that each transaction is completed using two-factor authentication.

How to Get Started with Mobile Banking App Development?

Banking app development has indeed become a hot trend in the fintech market. Whether big or small, companies across the domain invest in custom banking apps to magnify their brand value and revenues. 

Whether hiring an in-house development team or outsourcing your app development project, below are some crucial steps to help you with a seamless development process. 

Market Research & Competitor Analysis

Today’s digital era is all about next-gen technologies and ever-emerging customer needs. Companies that adopt the latest market trends while satisfying the dynamic customer needs win the competition curve. We are sure you want your organization to be a part of that successful lead.

Hence, you must analyze the latest market trends beneficial for your mobile banking app development. To frame an effective app development strategy, you should answer questions like:

• Who is my target audience?
• What are their concerns?
• Will my banking app resolve their issues?
• What operating system does my target audience use?
• What other banking apps do people use?
• What features do they like the most?
• Are there any suggestions for UI and technologies that can enhance my mobile banking app?

With in-depth market research, you can know the possible use cases that could be implemented in your banking app for a profit-generating future.

In your case, for instance, Gen-Z isn’t the only target audience that could use your banking app. Millennials and Gen X can also be a large segment of your banking app users. Many more such things can be uncovered with proper market research.

Hence, always partner with a reputed mobile app development company that offers market research and competitor analysis as a part of their app development package. Consult with a business analyst to explore the best app development trends and architecture for your banking app.

Hire Experienced Mobile Banking App Developers

Once you have analyzed your business needs and developed an effective app development strategy, the next step is hiring experienced app developers. You need a talented team of developers, testers, UI/UX designers, project managers, and API developers to build a top-notch and competitive mobile banking app. 

However, hiring multiple developers to create a single application may cost you a lot of money and time. Firstly, you will need proper knowledge of technologies and frameworks to hire the best talent for your project. 

Secondly, the cost of recruiting an in-house team may exceed your mobile banking app development budget. Last, you may not need an entire team once the app development is completed.

So, what can be done? That’s where outsourcing comes into play! You can easily hire the best banking app developers for your project on an hourly, monthly, or project basis. An experienced app development company like ours offers flexible hiring models that you can leverage to hire app developers.

Furthermore, you can even scale your app development team per your project needs. Whether you need a front-end developer or a solution architect, you can easily hire them by partnering with an experienced mobile banking app development company.  

Pay Heed to Features and UI/UX

Features and UI/UX are the most critical element of your mobile banking app development. If you have great features that distinguish your stand from the competitors, you will certainly gain more users in less time.

For instance, customer support and bank details are essential but normal. However, implementing a chatbot or voice recognition system in your banking app would certainly yield more revenue and profit. Hence, discover many exciting features by partnering with a reputed app development company.

UI/UX, on the other hand, is equally important for a successful application. Even if you have all the latest features that are not accessible to your users, they are useless to you. That’s why hiring experienced UI/UX designers becomes important. 

With certified UI/UX engineers, you can improve the navigation of your banking app. They can suggest a simple yet engaging design for your app that would eventually enhance the user experience of your banking app. 

And we all know that a higher UIX denotes better engagement, more revenues, and higher brand recognition. Hence, always pay attention to your app’s UI/UX factor. 

Read More: Top 7 Tips to Hire the Best UI/UX Designer

Always Begin with an MVP

MVP stands for a minimum viable product. It is, in simple terms, a functional prototype that allows you to alter your app’s design, architecture, and functionalities before the actual app development. 

In other words, with an MVP, you can analyze your application’s user interface. For instance, what does a certain feature do in your app? What designs and buttons will the users see after the final development? Does the banking app offer simple navigation to your target audience? 

Many such critical issues can be known to you with an MVP. Hence, always partner with a mobile banking app development company offering MVP development services. Ensure that your ideas and creatively presented by the designer and your project manager in the MVP. 

If you sense any mistakes, you can easily make alterations without waiting for the final version of your banking app.  

Develop the App

Once the features are known and the prototypes are finalized, it is time to develop your mobile banking app. However, there are certain things that you must consider before initiating your banking mobile app development.

Firstly, you should always use the agile development methodology for creating your app. That’s because, with the agile method, you can get constant updates about your app after every development stage. 

With that, you can easily alter things without disturbing the prior or next development cycle. That eventually saves your time and the cost of testing the product. 

Secondly, choose the best app development frameworks for your banking app to maximize its success. For instance, if you create a banking app only for the Android platform, then opting for Java, Kotlin, Android Studio, and Google Analytics can be your top choice.

However, if you want a cross-platform app, then opting for Flutter or React Native can be your top choice. 

Lastly, make sure to integrate the best third-party APIs in your app that facilitates smooth mobile banking app development. Things like social login and easy online payments can only be integrated with suitable APIs. Hence, make sure to incorporate those into your banking app. 

Test, and Deploy Your Banking App

Lastly, you must test and deploy your banking app on a suitable platform. Testing is one of the most crucial aspects of creating a successful mobile banking app. Opting for testing services can uncover the minutest of the bugs overlooked during mobile app development. 

However, despite the utmost importance, many companies skip testing, and, as a result, they experience glitches only after a few days of launch. We are sure you don’t want that for your mobile banking app. 

Hence, always test your digital product before the final launch. You can choose from manual or automated testing, matching your project requirements. Once you have tested your app over multiple platforms and devices, deploy it on your choice of platform.

Challenges to Address for a Successful Banking App

So, you have planned to begin with your mobile app development. You must have explored the current market trends and hired mobile banking app developers. 

However, you must address many other crucial things to ensure success in the mobile banking market. As a leading mobile banking app development company, we have listed some important factors that must be resolved. 

Security

Security is one of the primary challenges to be addressed during mobile banking app development. With the rise in digitization, cybersecurity concerns have only increased. Hence, users, especially the baking app users, desire a secure app that can protect their privacy and other financial info. 

Hence, there are certain things that you must incorporate into your banking app to make it more secure. Firstly, you should integrate two-factor authentication to secure the data of your users and your organization. Offering access-based rights with proper authentication is the key to security in today’s digital market.

Secondly, all the accounts on your banking app must be KYC-compliant. That means they must be linked to a valid identification card to analyze the user’s information and the risks associated with their profiles. For that, you can use a driving license or SIN/SSN to verify the user details. 

Lastly, make sure that the passwords set by your users are strong. That eventually means you should eliminate the passwords like DOB, name, or other basic details. Instead, a combination of letters (small and capital), numbers, and special characters must be used as a password. 

You must also adhere to the best security practices during your mobile banking app development. Opt for cloud computing to store your data and leverage security testing service for your banking app development. 

Compliance

Another important factor to consider during mobile banking app development is compliance. Every country has rules and regulations to maintain financial data and limit online fraud. In such a case, following the rules and regulatory compliance becomes essential if you plan to operate at multiple locations. 

Although a reputed enterprise mobility solutions company always delivers a compliant banking app, you must know certain rules and regulations if you plan to create an app on your own.

Personalized Services

Personalization is the key to success in today’s competitive era. If you plan to outsmart your competitors, offering personalized services is the only way. However, you cannot deliver personalized and quick services with legacy systems. 

Technologies like AI/ML, IoT, and cloud computing are needed to facilitate personalization across your organization. Hence, you must integrate next-level technologies and tools into your banking solution. You can even opt for legacy modernization services to update your existing banking software into a modern-day solution. 

Expert Consultation

Finally, we have expert consultation as our final mobile banking app development challenge. Expert consultation is one of the foremost aspects one must adopt for streamlined product development. Expert consultation lets you easily uncover the latest market trends and your competitor’s strategies. 

In fact, other things like technologies, app architecture, team structure, and even monetization models could be explored by connecting with an expert. Hence, you must leverage that service to maximize the chances of success for your mobile banking app. Remember, an expert app development company always offers expert consultation to all its clients for business-centric app development.

How Can Matellio Help with Your Banking App Development?

With years-long experience in mobile app development and creating next-gen fintech solutions, Matellio could be your best choice for banking app development. With a team of over 200 developers having experience in working on multiple next-gen technologies, we have delivered many similar banking apps to startups and enterprises. 

You get a wide range of app development services, from technology consultation and code review to testing, UI/UX, and even Play Store/App Store optimization services. Besides that, we also offer free competitor and market analysis services that help our clients to maximize their ROI. 

Due to such a robust offering, Matellio has been named the top app development company by platforms like Clutch and Top Developers. So, leverage the best app development services to launch your custom banking app in the market. Connect with our experts over a free consultation call and get a no-obligation quote matching your business requirements absolutely free!