Mobile Banking Development: Cost, Features, Steps

If you get across articles on digital banking in 2017–2018 you would realize that the predictions for 2021 in the number of registrations and the financial turnover of mobile banking apps were quite modest, compared to what happened in reality due to the pandemic and the effect it had on the banking sphere.

Not surprisingly, based on the analytics in April 2020, just after the USA claimed the state of emergency the new registrations in mobile banking apps soared 200% with the steady tendency of increasing even more.

Nowadays, as the pandemic is still around, there is no doubt that after COVID times the level of banking digitalization isn’t likely to go down. Moreover, new technologies emerging and their rapid integration with the FinTech sphere could indicate the further growth of the mobile banking solutions embedding broader functionality.

Banks and other financial institutions can only benefit from their mobile banking apps, as they reduce operating costs, improve the customer experience, and more importantly, increase security compared to accessing a bank account online via internet banking.

Mobile Banking Development Trends in 2022

1. Fast Growing Chain of Neobanks

Though brick-and-mortar banks are still the only way to settle some of the ongoing financial issues, only-digital banks are here to support their clients with online onboarding, account managing, balance checking, money transfers, money exchange, and other functionality.

2. Rapid Blockchain Adoption

Bearing in mind many of the banking services including bond and stock trade, clearinghouses, exchanges, audit, bookkeeping, and others, Blockchain input could be a significant step to bring these services to security, transparency, and spicing them up with the instant nature.

3. Data Science and AI-driven development

The introduction of AI into banking app development not only lowers operational costs by 22% but also helps banks and other financial institutions personalize the customer experience. AI and Data Science, together with Big Data are changing the banking sphere for the better: prevent fraud, detect anomalies in the accounts activity, provide detailed customer analytics, and take the bank applying such apps ahead of competitors.

4. Cybersecurity Concerns

It’s no secret that banks and other institutions that offer financial transactions receive and store large amounts of sensitive customer data. Any data leak or data breach could be harmful to end-users, as their identities, passwords, and other information could be misused by cybercriminals. For this reason, not only government institutions of different countries are trying to regulate this area, but also every financial institution is doing its best to ensure the security of banking apps through encryption, secure backend architecture, and decentralized technologies.

5. Open Banking APIs

Open banking helps to provide customers with better quality services by allowing banks to expose customers’ account data to third parties. This enables multiple FinTech solutions aimed at helping users to develop financial literacy and get better control of their spending behavior, saving more money and changing their lives for the better.

The aforementioned trends in mobile banking app development shape to some extent the way banking apps function nowadays because vendors always try to anticipate clients’ needs and cater to them in the best possible way.

7 Must-have Features for a Banking App

In this section, we would like to specify the basic features of a mobile banking app, give the approximate time required to implement it, and estimate mobile banking app development costs. Mind that the price for the service stems from the total number of development hours multiple $50 (average hourly rate of a senior coder). Note, that the calculation of development hours below as well as the mobile banking development costs are very rough estimations and cannot be considered as the final price for the services. Moreover, in case you would like to cooperate on other terms, for example, hiring a dedicated team, the costs differ.

1. Onboarding and Authentication

This is a very important feature because registration and authentication in a banking app should be secure and at the same time should not take a lot of time and be a headache for the user. It’s important to provide a seamless onboarding experience and ensure that the process complies with AML regulations. Authentication should be secured with either PIN, SMS, fingerprint sensor, or iris scan. Onboarding along with authentication can take up to 220 development hours, which equates to $11,000.

2. Cards Management

A straightforward way to check account balance and transaction history leads to higher customer satisfaction. Also, the customer should be able to change the PIN, order a new card, block the card, if needed, or update some personal information effortlessly. To enable these basic features a team should spend around 276 hours and you might pay $13,800 for front-end and back-end architecture development.

3. Money Transfer and Bill Payment

Customers should be able to make local and international financial transactions, pay for the utility bills, and preview the payments at the checkout. Ideally, the app should include alongside the traditional methods of payment NFC payments, UPI payments, QR-code-based payments, and others. While connecting banking servers to the app, mind applying additional security levels. To implement these features a development team might spend around 1070 hours and it’s likely to cost you $53,500.

4. Cashback

Many banks have agreements with grocery chains or other trading companies to provide cashback for their customers in case cardholders are paying with the bank card at the shop. It could be an important feature to obtain new customers and its implementation might take up to 150 development hours which is equivalent to $7,500.

5. Customer Support 24/7

Of course, any bank has customer support that customers can access during the bank opening hours. For other cases, it’s a good idea to come up with an AI-driven chatbot that will be there for your customers 24/7 providing personalized help and guidance. 180 development hours are usually spent on this feature implementation which would cost around $9,000.

6. Settings and Push Notifications

Your customers need to have their accounts easy to manage, add a new phone number to their information section, new address, change the account type, etc. Also, in case there is something that needs an update, the app should be able to notify the customer. Another way to grab users’ attention is to enable transactional push alerts and promotional notifications offering deals and discounts. A development team could spend around 325 hours to provide the app with the needed functionality, so $16,250 from the budget would be likely spent on it.

7. Branch/ATM Locator

With the idea to make it easy for the customers to spot the nearest free of charge ATM or the bank branch, it’s worth considering your app integration with Google maps or App maps through the APIs. It might take up to 128 development hours and will cost you $6,400 to enable this functionality.

How to Develop a Mobile Banking App

✅ Have a Plan and Conduct Research

Mind thorough preparation and run the market research not to end up spending all your budget developing a mobile banking application that is not very welcomed by the end-users. Study the competitors, their digital solutions, what preferences your target audience might have. It’s crucial to understand who your customers are: students, families, corporate clients, or institutions? What’s more important, find out what they need, and this to a great extent affects the app toolkit and the sketching.

✅ Prototype Creation

Mobile banking app development can be quite costly compared to other FinTech solutions. That’s why it’s a good idea to create a detailed prototype to see what your product will look like. Use your app wireframe and then hi-fi prototype to get feedback as early as possible while validating your concept. Discuss with your focus group the required toolkit, test interface, and functionality of the prototype.

✅ Choose a Vendor with the Needed Technology Expertise

At this stage, it is crucial to make the right choice. Go online and contact several fintech development companies with the checklist for your future solution. Discuss project scope, scalability, and complexity. Pay attention to the responses of the company representatives regarding the number of professionals, their skills, and a proven track record in fintech development.

✅ Test your App

The stage of testing your solution is as important as the process of its creation, especially in mobile banking app development. Get hold of in-app experiences, boost the core metrics, test the features in production. Of course, if you made up your choice to outsource the development to the company with the in-house designing, development, and testing departments, you would benefit because the level of cooperation between them is much higher than freelancers or separate companies responsible only for their part in the solution creation.

✅ Product Maintenance

As soon as the solution is ready, you upload it to Google Play and AppStore and wait for feedback or reach out to influencers and bloggers in your field. For the best outcome, make sure the maintenance of the app is discussed in the contract and the vendor who knows the project and is responsible for all stages of the development is the one maintaining it.

To Wrap Up

Banking software development is a sensitive issue for both financial companies and development agencies. So, make sure that the vendor you choose has the required certifications to comply with government security regulations, has developed a variety of similar solutions, has the required knowledge in cutting-edge technologies, and speaks the same language with you when it comes to understanding your goals and striving for the best outcome.

Also, go for a discovery phase option to build additional confidence in the vendor during the early stage of your product development. For valuable insights on mobile banking app development or to get a quote from us, click here. We assure you that we will take good care of your project.

Originally published on Itexus Blog on December 21, 2021.