Custom Fintech Software Development: A Comprehensive Guide

The fusion of finance, data, analysis, and technology makes Fintech one of the most exciting and innovative fields around. The big question at the heart of this field is how to make the most of these newly available resources. The best solution on the market, custom Fintech software development, enables businesses to take customers from a traditional model of financial transactions into one more suited to the digital age. Let's look at how.

By combining the advantages of traditional finance models with the strengths of modern software platforms, Fintech software developers can do remarkable things for customers. Today, users are accustomed to accessing secure, robust, and performant applications though how Fintech apps are being used and what they are capable of doing is continually evolving.

Within this guide we take a look at what custom Fintech software development is, how it creates a competitive advantage for businesses, the benefits it provides to users, and how you can deploy it for your business at a moment's notice.

What is Fintech Software?

Fintech software covers everything from mobile banking apps to financial trading software and cryptocurrency exchanges — every piece of software that touches or can be touched by the finance industry. What these apps have in common is that they create transparent and open access to a world previously closed-off, exclusive, and largely hidden.

Great Fintech software improves on what came before by adding better security, automating key processes, and integrating apps with third-party services. For businesses, it creates opportunities to improve regulatory compliance, ensure a higher degree of scalability, and place user experience at the heart of design.

Within the broad umbrella of Fintech software there are a huge number of waiting opportunities for businesses to take advantage of.

How is Fintech Software Used Today?

Over the last 15 years, Fintech has exploded in both popularity and use as it's grown in capability and availability. As a result, it has rapidly diverged into new areas, revolutionized existing fields, and had a seismic impact across many diverse industries. Some of the most popular uses for custom financial software development today include:

Personal Finance Apps

Applications such as NerdWallet and Mint have revolutionized access to personal finance. Providing users with income management tools, ways to track spending, and access to low-cost financial products — these apps have transformed the personal finance industry in a short amount of time.

Investment Apps

The single biggest impact of Fintech software today comes from the array of highly capable investment apps currently available. Fintech software developers have transformed slow and cumbersome traditional processes with lightning-quick access.

Credit Monitoring

One of the major paradigm shifts Fintech has enabled is a new era of transparency in the world of finance. Credit monitoring apps are key to this shift by providing users with access to their credit score and history with the strictest confidentiality and security over the process.

P2P Lending

Financial software development companies have even been able to create entirely new fields from scratch. P2P (peer-to-peer) lending allows lenders worldwide to connect directly to borrowers to lend out cash and collect repayments. The advantage that Fintech software provides in this field by lowering costs, increasing security, and improving access makes it a truly remarkable leap.

Of course, these four examples are just the start of what Fintech can provide for organizations. We've yet to even touch on the worlds of cryptocurrency, decentralization, or the traditional barriers the industry is breaking down daily.

5 Benefits of Custom Fintech Software Development

Fintech holds a huge amount of potential in its ability to enhance what a business can do and build entirely new services. Yet, there are multiple ways to reach these advantages.

You might pick up a read-made solution off-the-shelf to solve current business challenges fast, for example. On the other hand, you might want to deploy a custom financial software development team to build to your unique specifications, reach all of Fintech's advantages, and create software to serve long into the future.

Here, we look at just five of the most impactful benefits Fintech software developers can produce.

1. Enhanced Application Security and Compliance

Financial data is some of the most sensitive we routinely interact with. As a result, we have to put a strong emphasis on security, regulatory compliance, and how it's accessed.

In comparison to off-the-shelf software published to fill a broad gap in the market, a tailored Fintech solution meets specific access and security requirements unique to your firm.

2. Improved User Experience for Customers

Providing a bespoke app that meets all of your customers' requirements in one place is far more satisfying than requiring several apps to do the same job. Whether improving on what's come before in the digital space or building something entirely new that improves on traditional methods — customers notice innovation and appreciate it in a big way.

3. Enabling Scalability, Upgrades, and Future Growth

The biggest stumbling block of off-the-shelf solutions is that there's no room to improve. In comparison, custom Fintech solutions allow companies to lay the groundwork to scale and upgrade in the future with solid engineering practices.

4. Full-Service Integration

One of the key advantages of modern Fintech software is its ability to integrate with third-party services. Allowing applications to interface securely with financial institutions and data sources — this capability puts ease of access and interoperability front and center in new applications to make them a core part of users' daily lives.

5. A Unique Competitive Advantage

In a highly competitive industry like Fintech, any small edge you can earn over competing businesses can make a huge difference in results. A financial software development company can give your firm a sizeable advantage by offering something unique your competitors can't match.

Best Practices of Fintech Software Development

As we've already seen, security and compliance are some of the biggest challenges in custom Fintech software development today. Yet, we also have to pay close attention to existing traditional software engineering challenges such as performance, scalability, and accessibility too.

Some of the most critical factors to put front and center in Fintech software design are borrowed from related fields to face the industry's biggest challenges head-on.

Creating a Robust Fintech Software Architecture

The unique demands of Fintech software make selecting the right architecture to support it crucially important. Two of the most popular patterns we often recommend for Fintech services include:

• Microservice Architecture. Dividing applications into several independently deployable services that communicate with each other through APIs. Microservices provide outstanding scalability — making it easy to isolate faults and build additional services in the future.
• Event-Driven Architecture. A pattern that revolves around software components asynchronously responding to events. This design allows app modules to passively wait until they respond to events and incoming data in real time.

Deploying Effective Data Management

Fintech services are built on good data. Transaction records, user data, and historical trends are some of the crucial building blocks that make up modern services. How you manage that data, analyze it, and secure it will be vital to the longevity of your app and its user base.

Considering both the granular level of databases and data types and scaling up to frequent security audits are some of the key factors to consider in this area.

Creating Strong Security and Regulatory Compliance

The combination of security requirements and frequent access needs makes for a unique set of challenges for any financial software development company. It's for precisely these reasons that Fintech regulations are notoriously strict and unforgiving.

Great Fintech designs solve these challenges by putting security front and center in planning right from day one.

How to Choose a Custom Fintech Software Development Company

The most critical step towards building the best Fintech solution out there is choosing the best financial software development company you can find to build it. Once you get that right, every subsequent decision going forward will be positively impacted by the result.

Some of the key things to look out for when choosing a Fintech software provider should include:

A Rich Mix of Case Studies, Testimonials, and Reviews

Looking closely at how a development company has performed in the past is the perfect insight into how well you can work with them today. Look for cases similar to your own with the kind of innovation and attention to detail you'd expect in-house.

A Strong Portfolio of Previous Fintech Apps.

An app portfolio is your chance to get hands-on evidence of what Fintech software developers can and do create. Pay particularly close attention to the previous integrations they've deployed and the technologies used to see if they match your own.

Regulatory Knowledge and Experience

Somewhat unique to Fintech, experience with the relevant regulatory requirements and bodies can have a huge impact on your success. Companies that have worked in industries and filed you aim to target will have a greater degree of familiarity with what's needed for compliance and how to achieve it.

A Well-Fitting Team Meeting Your Requirements

Try to gauge the fit of a team's communication, working style, and practices from early interactions. Securing a team that works well within your existing expectations and practices will save a great deal of time building soft skills in the long run and enable a more productive working relationship.

5 Steps to Building Quality Fintech Software

1. Choose Your Niche

Figure out what problems your application is going to tackle and how you're going to improve over what's already out there.

2. Thoroughly Research Your Market

Understanding your competition and audience is crucial to success in any software endeavor. In Fintech, it's ten times more important because you're asking for your users' trust in a sensitive field — finance. Understand what your users need and provide it well to earn that trust.

3. Land on a Software Design

Translate your research and requirements into an architectural plan for high-quality software. Think carefully about all of the design factors we listed above such as security, compliance, and user experience to earn the trust of your users.

4. Build Quality Fintech Software

Because you've done your due diligence and hard work ahead of time, this part is surprisingly easy. Your chosen Fintech software provider will often start with an MVP (minimal viable product) to meet your goals and expand on features and functionality as the project progresses.

5. Test and Iterate On Your Design

A step many would rather gloss over, it's a fatal mistake not to consult your users before launching at scale. Find out what works from your research and look carefully at what doesn't go to plan. Good software construction should create an iterative process that allows you to return to the table to perfect your solution.

Is Custom Software Right For My Fintech Company?

If you're looking to launch into the marketplace by the end of the week, then no, it's probably not. You can pick up an off-the-shelf solution, plug in your bank details, and have a basic version to use fast.

If you're aiming to invest in software that forms the backbone of your business, however, you want something that represents your firm and delivers a customer experience that's going to cause users to stick around.

Custom Fintech software development is a solution that promotes high-quality software following the best practices of software design and development. If these are elements valuable to you then custom Fintech software is ideally suited to meet your business requirements.

To find the team that meets your requirements and builds your future software, all you have to do is submit a brief and let us make the match that makes the difference.

FAQ

What Does a Fintech Software Developer Do?

Financial technology application developers, or Fintech app developers for short, create applications to handle financial transactions such as trading, transferring funds, or paying bills. While the financial world has been historically slow to adapt to new trends, Fintech has revolutionized the industry and created an environment where businesses can deliver a huge amount of value to consumers.

By leveraging data, analytics, and new business models being made possible Fintech software developers can create exciting and revolutionary applications in a rapidly evolving field.

How to Build Fintech Software?

The key thing to keep at the forefront of development when building Fintech software is to put security, reliability, and trust above all else. Customers won't trust bad software with their finances readily. A good plan, robust development practices, and past experience in the field are crucial to success. A concise plan for Fintech software might include:

• Stage 1: Conduct strong market research into user requirements and local regulations
• Stage 2: Outline features users will demand
• Stage 3: Choose a suitable technology stack
• Stage 4: Define an MVP for your product
• Stage 5: Define the necessary API integrations for financial services
• Stage 6: Design a UI/UX to get a user's attention
• Stage 7: Develop, test, and refine your product to MVP
• Stage 8: Test launch to a select audience
• Stage 9: Refine and launch into the marketplace

What Software is Used in Fintech?

Fintech software defines a cast category of software solutions that apply to the financial industry. These can range from consumer credit score apps and personal lending platforms to financial trading algorithms and banking services. Some of the most revolutionary Fintech applications today include:

• Payment Processing Software
• Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
• Personal Finance
• Peer-to-Peer Lending Platforms
• Financial Data Aggregation and Analytics
• Cybersecurity Software
• Mobile Banking Apps