This guide walks you through what fintech app development includes; and how to create a product that customers want to use.
You will uncover:

Seven steps of fintech application development using software development life cycle.
Essential fintech app features.
Technology stack for mobile and web applications, quality assurance, and UI/UX design.
How to choose fintech application developers.
Metrics of an effective development process.

Fintech application development stages

This tutorial explains how to make a fintech app following the software development life cycle.

1. Prepare the groundwork for a project

Aim: Indicate the type of fintech app you need and the scope of the project.

Challenge: Gather stakeholders’ objectives, visions, and other considerations.

Involved people:

Project/Product manager
Business analysts
Stakeholders

First, define the problem you want to solve with software engineering. For example, you need fintech app development services. Describe what you want: back-end and front-end development of your app, UI/UX design, testing, and updating your fintech app. After that, define the work scope. You need to gather requirements, visions, and other considerations from stakeholders. They can be directors, vice presidents, and financial specialists.

In this stage of a fintech app development, you determine whether the project will be successful. Here are aspects to consider:

Economic aspect. Identify the company’s return on investment, project expenses, potential revenue, and expected profits.
Legal aspect. From this perspective, define legal requirements for your fintech mobile app. Plus, determine how beneficial it is to comply with them.
Operational aspect. You need to answer this question: How does the fintech app project help your company achieve its goals?
Schedule. Determine how much time to spend for each stage of the fintech application’s development process. Also, you can set a launch deadline.

Feedback from Sombra client on custom software development

A client of Sombra defined the project vision at an early stage.

Documents to prepare include:

Concept of Operations to describe expectations of your fintech app.
System Boundary Document to define objectives for software development.
Cost/Benefit Analysis to calculate how much your fintech project will cost.
Feasibility Study to provide how a fintech app will run against time and financial constraints.
Acquisition Plan to summarize fintech product metrics, technical, business, management, and other considerations.
Risk Analysis to identify and rank your project risks.

Risk analysis template for fintech app development

Risk analysis template

2. Determine functional and non-functional requirements

Aim: Create a Software Requirements Specification document.

Challenge:

Ensure that stakeholders agree on requirements.
Elicit each significant non-functional requirement.

Involved people:

Business analysts
Project/Product manager
UI/UX designer
Solution Architect
Stakeholders

At this stage, you need to determine functional requirements — something the app must do. For example, your fintech app must track portfolio performance in real time. Or it must collect data on taxable events and provide interactive charts.

Then, you determine non-functional requirements or quality attributes — how an app must do it. For instance, it must review portfolio performance in 1 second. Also, under high load, the system should be able to do transaction processing for 1000 simultaneous users.

Use Quality Attribute Workshop to define quality attribute scenarios with all stakeholders. It helps to prepare the basis for future system architecture. Also, it allows you to align all stakeholders’ expectations.

Next, it’s essential to consider fintech app security. Regulatory rules and requirements include:

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the European Union’s data protection regulation.
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), a state statute that provides privacy rights and consumer protection for California residents in the United States.
Know Your Customer, a set of guidelines financial institutions follow to verify customer identity and risks.
Anti-Money Laundering, regulations that require collecting customer information, monitoring transactions, and reporting suspicious activity to financial regulatory authorities.
Electronic Fund Transfer Act (Regulation E) protects consumers during electronic transactions.

The next step after gathering requirements is to rank the most significant ones. User story mapping helps to prioritize functional ones. And utility tree helps with non-functional ones.

User story mapping

This technique visualizes the customer’s journey. It is crucial for creating a smooth user experience design for your fintech app. User story mapping includes three levels: activities, tasks, and details.

User Story Mapping for a financial mobile application

User story mapping

3. Design fintech app architecture based on requirements

Aim: Create High-Level Design and Low-Level Design.

Challenge: To ensure that the above documents are comprehensive.

Involved people:

Team lead
Software engineers

The architectural design document explains the architecture you will use to develop a fintech app. This document represents a suitable model for coding. In order to develop fintech app design, you can use Attribute Driven Design method.

“Attribute-Driven Design allows you to build system architecture based on specific quality attributes using architectural tactics and styles. Those architectural tactics and styles help you address quality assurance. For example, how can you achieve the desired system 99.99% availability number?

One of ways is to monitor your system constantly to detect possible availability faults. To do so, use tactics such as heartbeat and ping echo. Also, you can apply active redundancy tactics to recover from faults. In addition, to prevent those issues in future, specify some conditions when traffic needs to be switched to redundant node,” — explains Mykhailo Voitovych, Engineering Competence Lead at Sombra.

Then, you create the Low-Level Design document to describe every module of your fintech app in detail. To do so, you can utilize design patterns such as the Singleton, Decorator, and Command patterns. You can also use other common practices. SOLID, KISS, and YAGNI.

At this stage, you can also use the Domain-Driven Design method. The purpose of this method is to model software that matches a domain according to input from the domain’s experts.

4. Develop the back-end and the front-end of your application

Aim: Back-end and front-end development.

Challenge: The development process may take longer than expected because of unforeseeable pitfalls.

People involved:

Software engineers

Quality of coding is essential when you create a fintech app. Here are some examples of guidelines to follow:

Gang of Four software design patterns and principles.
Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) to avoid repetition of patterns and code duplication.
Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) to keep designs, solutions, systems, and products simple.
You aren’t gonna need it (YAGNI) to avoid adding not required features.
Domain-Driven Design to focus on modeling software that matches a domain.

Utilize automated tools such as SonarQube to identify code related flaws. Plus, consider using AI tools such as Github Copilot and ChatGPT. In addition, you can ask experienced software engineers to review your code.

Also, remember these rules to ensure security during fintech application development:

Use the latest software tools, programs, systems, and runtime environments.
Check third-party libraries for vulnerabilities before using them.
View any user data or input as potentially malicious and untrusted.
Use the principle of least privilege to give the minimum levels of access or permissions.
Encrypt data at rest and in transit. Encrypting data at rest is especially significant for sensitive data in your datastores.
Require third-party secure integrations.
Go through audit logging to document activity within your fintech application.

Feedback from Sombra client on custom software development

Feedback from Sombra client on Clutch

5. Test your fintech application

Aim: Cover testing scenarios.

Challenge: Tests cover important business scenarios.

Involved people:

QA engineers
AQA engineers
Business analysts

“Use the Test Pyramid to break tests into three components: unit, integration, and end-to-end testing,” — offers Mykhailo Voitovych, Engineering Competence Lead at Sombra.

Follow this checklist to ensure security testing for your web or mobile application development for fintech:

Static application security testing detects source code vulnerabilities.
Dynamic application security testing stimulates external attacks to identify security vulnerabilities
Interactive application security testing for post-build code weaknesses analysis in a dynamic environment.
Compliance testing verifies whether your fintech app complies with regulations and industry security standards.

To save development time, write automated tests using Python, JS, or TS language with Cypress, Selenium, and Playwright.

Testing fintech application template

An example of a fintech application testing document

6. Deploy your application on a secure infrastructure

Aim: Release your fintech application.

Challenge:

Identify issues before customers face them.
Build an effective deployment process and select an appropriate deployment model.

Involved people:

Software engineers
DevOps engineers

Deploy your application on a secure infrastructure — cloud or on-premises. Use CI/CD approach to change code quickly and reliably.

Here are the deployment models to follow:

Canary to release an application incrementally to a subset of users.
Blue/green deployment to maintain two separate identical environments.
Rolling update to update previous versions of an application.

“At this stage, you must consider disaster recovery and business continuity scenarios. Also, constant monitoring deployment is essential as it allows you to fix issues before they can affect users,” — explains Mykhailo Voitovych, Engineering Competence Lead at Sombra.

7. Update your fintech application

Aim: Regular updates of your fintech application.

Challenge: Breaking changes affect the scope of work.

Involved people:

Project/Product manager
Business analysts
Software engineers
QA engineers

Your application needs regular updating, modifying, and re-assessing. On the one hand, it observes that your fintech app continues functioning correctly and efficiently. On the other hand — ensure your application stays up-to-date with the latest security protocols. Plus, it is not vulnerable to security flaws from third-party systems or libraries.

6-steps of maintenance a fintech application

The process of maintenance stage

Want a development team to build a fintech app from scratch? Contact us to discuss your vision.

Essential fintech app features

The purpose of fintech app development is to improve financial services through technology.

Basic fintech apps need such features as budget tracking, account management, and account verification (Know Your Customer). In addition, depending on the type of fintech app, it must include account aggregation and investment profile dashboard.

Here are more features to consider:

Biometric authentication

It can be fingerprint, facial, eye, voice, hand shape, and signature recognition. For instance, a good practice is to require biometric authentication when users change account settings.

With biometric authentication, users don’t have to type in a password to access an app. Additionally, it’s easy to implement for software engineers. Both iOS and Android platforms support biometric authentication.

Push notifications

It provides users with the most up-to-date information. The app can send real-time market analysis or stock investments, for example. It can also send notifications to help users rebalance their portfolios quickly.

Reporting

It allows users to check their financial transactions and activities through summary reports. For example, your fintech app can provide real-time reporting of users’ investment positions. It can also display a portfolio’s total return and risk measures.

Chatbots

Finance chatbots allow users to solve common issues 24/7, every day. They can also answer questions and make account analyses. For instance, users can check active loans and portfolio performance.

Voice-assisted banking

It enables users to perform tasks and transactions using voice commands. For example, this feature helps with account inquiries, fund transfers, bill payments, and security authentication. Voice-assisted banking also can provide information about investment portfolios’ performance and instruct trades or market events.

Third-party integrations

For example, integration with payment providers such as Stripe and PayPal helps them to transfer money seamlessly. Another option — accounting software such as Xero and Quickbooks for managing finances. You can use spreadsheet integration with MS Excel or Google Spreadsheets to allow users to import and export financial data. Additionally, such market data software as MorningStar and BlackRock enables users to access real-time analytics.

Technology stack for financial app development

Fintech tech stack comprises programming languages, frameworks, databases, front-end, and back-end tools. It consists of front-end (user side) and back-end (server-side) technologies. Front-end technologies include programming languages (JavaScript), front-end frameworks (Angular), and libraries (React). Back-end technologies include server-side languages such as Java, back-end frameworks (Spring for Java), and databases.

Technology stack for fintech mobile app development

Programming languages	Frameworks
JS (cross platform apps)	Ionic, Flutter, React Native, Apache Cordova,
Java (Android)	Android Jetpack
Kotlin (Android)	Jetpack Compose
Swift (iOS)	Jetpack Compose

Technology stack for fintech web development

Fintech frontend web development

Programming language	Frameworks
JS	React, Angular, Vue.JS

Fintech backend web application development

Programming language	Frameworks
Java	Spring Boot, Play Framework, Akka Framework, Hibernate ORM, Micronaut
C#	ASP.NET, Core, Entity Framework Core (ORM), Nancy
Python	Django, Flask
Node.JS	Express.js, Nest.js, Koa.js

Technology stack for fintech app UI/UX design

Tools
Sketch, Adobe Photoshop, Blender, Principle, Adobe XD, Zeplin, Figma

Technology stack for quality assurance

Functional testing	Performance/load testing	Security testing
Postman (manual)	JMeter	SonarCube (static analysis)
TestNG	Locust	OWASP ZAP
JUnit	Apache Banchmark
Rest assured (Java)	Kibana k6
Selenium
Cypress (automated testing)

How much does it cost to build a fintech app?

Minimum value product with features such as money transfer (third-party APIs), open new account, paying bills, multi-factor authentication, and notifications starts from $100,000. The exact fintech app development estimate depends on several factors. For example, project size and hourly rates of software development.

Creating a minimum value product requires three months of work and a team of five people:

Back-end engineer
Android engineer
iOS engineer
2 QA engineers
Business analysts (part-time)
Project manager (part-time)
UI/UX designer (part-time)

Location	Average hourly rates, USD
North America	77
Latin America	60
Eastern Europe	35-50
Western Europe	75

Want to speak about your fintech app development cost? Contact us to discuss your fintech project!

How to choose a fintech app development company?

It is essential to look for signs that a software development company is trustworthy. Here are four factors to consider:

Experience in fintech applications development

Review if a company has a fintech page to explore its services. Then, examine its case studies. For example, you can pick case studies using the “Banking and Finance” filter on the Sombra website. To learn more about the company’s expertise, visit its profile on Clutch.

Also, ask the company to share its statistics in fintech app development. For instance, 30% of Sombra’s revenue comes from its big financial client in North America.

Feedback from Sombra client on custom software development

Custom software development for a financial services firm

Policy on security standards

Security is crucial for fintech applications development. Check if the company has security certifications. For example, it received ISO 27001 certification, the world’s leading information security standard. Or the company has SOC 2 certification, an international standard for service organizations.

Then, ask the company about its security policy. Does it have an Incident Response Plan, Vendor Management Policy, and Data Retention Policy? You can talk about it with the company’s Information Security Officer.

Policy for minimizing inconveniences

There are four major obstacles you can face when collaborating with a software development company:

Time zone differences

Ask the company what benefits you receive from overlap. For example, our 20 clients in North America receive continuous development. But those clients who prefer the same time zone can work with our Colombian team. We have an office in Medellin, one of the biggest cities in Colombia.

Communication gap

Inquire if the company has English and communication courses. Another thing to consider — is whether these courses focus on professional vocabulary. Also, you can ask how frequently the company checks the English level of employees. Another option is to review how other clients describe the collaboration with the company’s employees on Clutch.

Feedback from Sombra client on effectiveness of communication and work

Sombra client’s feedback on Clutch

Cultural differences

Can company employees debate with clients about the most effective fintech app security solutions? Or discuss the best approaches of your fintech product development? Verify if they agree with everything clients say or if they offer their ideas and admit mistakes openly.

Project management challenges

It’s essential to check if the company has a project coordinator without charge to handle communication. You can also ask if there are project managers who can help you with team management.

Business continuity planning

For instance, Ukraine’s IT exports for 2022 increased by 5,8% compared to 2021. One of the reasons — Ukrainian IT companies have business continuity planning. Moreover, the IT industry paid UAH 32.2 billion to the consolidated budget of Ukraine. It is an increase of 16% over last year.

The number of employees at Sombra from 2020 to 2023

Each year, the number of employees at Sombra increases

Want to talk in detail about our fintech app development services? Just contact us to discuss your questions.

Metrics of an effective fintech app development process

Is developing your finance app in the right direction? Here are factors to evaluate the development process:

The cost is within your budget

Once you sign a contract for your fintech mobile app development, you receive a precise cost estimation for the entire project. The company keeps you from knowing about additional charges rapidly. Also, you pay a competitive price for good work quality. The development team offers the best solutions cost-efficiently for your project requirements.

Feedback from Sombra client on cost

Sombra client’s feedback on Clutch

You stick to your schedule

Once you assign a project management plan, the development team tries to achieve fintech mobile app development objectives. Also, team members build reliable relationships with you to communicate challenges.

Feedback from Sombra client on work effectiveness

Sombra client’s feedback on Clutch

You receive a high-quality code

For example, software engineers use approved code guidelines during fintech application development. They also promote code level documentation and high coverage of application tests. Plus, experienced fintech app developer reviews the code, so it has low defect density.

Feedback from Sombra client on performence effectiveness in fintech app development

Sombra client’s feedback on Clutch

An overview of technologies in fintech application development

Fintech app development enables you to apply big data analytics, robo-advisors, and cryptocurrencies. Here are some of the technologies discussed in the fintech industry.

Decentralized finance (DeFi)

This emerging technology bases on secure distributed ledgers similar to cryptocurrencies. It operates on decentralized networks, allowing users to access financial services without intermediaries. In this way, it differs from traditional financial systems that rely on centralized institutions.

Decentralized finance poses several challenges. For example, DeFi needs more regulatory compliance. Its decentralized environment makes it difficult to monitor transactions and implement standards such as the Anti-Money Laundering and Electronic Fund Transfer Act.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Using artificial intelligence, you can analyze vast amounts of financial data and perform complex calculations. For instance, AI algorithms monitor and detect abnormal transactions and learn from historical market data.

Internet of Things

Internet of Things is a network of interconnected devices and objects that collect, exchange, and analyze data. For example, IoT-enabled devices like smartwatches allow users to make contactless payments. They can also track and manage assets in real time. On the other hand, IoT devices collect sensitive information, making them attractive targets for malicious actors.

Examples of fintech applications

You may have heard of applications such as Chime, Venmo, and Bank of America Mobile Banking. These are five more fintech apps worth your attention.

Chase Mobile

It offers tools to fraud monitoring, and the ability to lock a card in the app. Users can also monitor their credit journey, budget, and spending. Chase Mobile offers to use J.P. Morgan Equity Research and tools to customize their portfolios.

Wells Fargo Mobile

This app allows users to set up account alerts, pay bills, transfer money between accounts, and deposit checks. It offers investment options, monitoring money, create a saving plans, and receive credit monitoring alerts. Wells Fargo Mobile also has a virtual assistant to offer shortcuts, insights, and answers.

Aave

Aave is an open-source non-custodial protocol. Aave created the Aave Protocol, entirely governed by the Aave Community of AAVE token holders. Users can supply and borrow cryptographic assets through the protocol without third-party intermediaries.

Nexus Mutual

Nexus Mutual is “the insurance alternative for crypto and more.” Since 2019, Nexus Mutual has protected $4.4B of crypto assets and paid more than $17M in claims to people who suffered losses.

***

It was the guide on how to build a fintech app in six stages — planning, requirement, design, development, testing, and deployment. Plus, how to keep your application updated on the maintenance stage.

Want an efficient development team for building a fintech app? Contact us to work together.

FAQ

What are the seven stages of fintech app development?

Prepare the groundwork for a project.
Determine functional and non-functional requirements.
Design fintech app architecture based on requirements.
Develop the back-end and front-end of your application.
Test your fintech application.
Deploy your application on a secure infrastructure.
Update your fintech application.

Does Sombra have an expertise in fintech app development?

30% of Sombra’s revenue comes from its big financial clients in North America. The company has over 7 year of collaboration with one of the top 15 banks in the world.

How does Sombra minimize offshore software development challenges?

1. Time zone differences. With the 3-4 hour overlap, we can provide continuous development to our North American clients. Also, Sombra has an office in Medellin, Colombia. If our clients want to work in the same time zone, our team in Colombia is available.

2. Communication gap. Sombra provides English and communication courses every week. Also, our software engineers have classes with native English speakers.

3. Cultural differences. Proactivity is one of Sombra’s values. Software engineers don’t only agree with clients. They offer their own suggestions as well.

4. Project management challenges. We assign a project coordinator without charge to ensure an efficient development process. In addition, you can work with one of our project managers for an additional fee.

I have questions about your development process. Where can I find more information?

You can get in touch with us through our contact form. Also, learn about custom software development service on our website.

What are UI/UX design practices in a fintech app development?

Interaction design is an important component of creating user experience. Here are common principles to consider:

Define how your users interact with the interface.
Provide users with hints about behavior before taking any actions.
Anticipate and mitigate errors.
Consider system feedback and response time.
Simplify for learnability.

Visual design is another significant part in fintech application development. It focuses on the application’s appeal and usability with suitable images, typography, space, layout, and color.

How to Build a Fintech App: 7-Step Development Process, Features, Tech Stack, Cost

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