Ultimate Guide to Mobile Banking Platform Development

With digital transformation unfurling in various industries, the banking sector is no exception. Mobile apps are becoming an integral part of banking, facilitating convenience and accessibility. Moreover, it provides banking services on the go, allowing users to track and manage their financial transactions more effectively.

Consequently, mobile banking apps are witnessing massive growth. In fact, the number of digital banking users in the United States is expected to reach over 217 million by 2025. This growth reflects how promising the future of financial technology (fintech) is because consumers increasingly embrace mobile banking apps. This is why more business owners and banks are reaching out to industry-leading Fintech app development companies to build their mobile banking platforms, and thus reshaping the landscape of traditional banking services.

However, the budget, processes, challenges, and technology must be your concern if you are looking for mobile banking app development. In this blog, we will explain everything you need for a streamlined mobile app development process.

Let’s begin…

 

Why Businesses Should Invest in Mobile Banking App Development

 

Building a mobile banking app gives your business brand visibility. Moreover, it increases the revenue opportunities while improving your customer experience. This, ultimately, helps your business flourish and excel in the competitive market.

As a business owner, you must know the benefits of developing a mobile banking app to decide to invest your time and budget:

 

1. Low Operational Costs

With mobile app development, you can streamline your banking operations. This results in increased efficiency and a reduction in operating costs. Additionally, AI integration eliminates redundancies and enhances customer service, improving the overall banking experience.

 

2. High Revenue

Various studies are showing that with mobile banking solutions, financial institutions can increase their revenue rate. One such study shows that organizations can generate more than $2 million in incremental revenues and reduce attrition by more than 15 percent.

 

3. Enhanced Customer Experience

Various convenience features, gamification, and AI-powered chatbots of mobile banking apps enhance the customer experience, adding to the benefits of mobile banking.

 

4. Build Customer Loyalty

With robust security features and parameters like biometric authentication, encryption, and penetration testing, businesses can establish trust with their users.

 

5. Improved Customer Retention

Moreover, banks can reimagine customer relationships with rewards and loyalty programs, an inbuilt CRM system, wallet integration, and other innovative features. This helps businesses to increase customer retention rates.

 

Technology Used in Mobile Banking App Development

 

In the rapidly evolving landscape of mobile app development, it is essential to use the latest tools and technologies.

Moreover, your technology choices may vary based on the project requirements, team expertise, and other factors.

Therefore, define your app idea clearly before diving into the app development process.

Here are the technologies you can use for mobile banking app development:

Front-end Development

HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript

Back-end Development

Node.js, Java, Express.js

Mobile App Development Technologies

Swift for iOS, Kotlin for Android, React Native for cross-platform apps

Database

PostgreSQL, MongoDB

Project Management Tools

Jira, Trello

Testing Tools

Jest, XCTest, JUnit, Appium, Jenkins, Travis CI

DevOps

GitHub, Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes

Cloud Services

AWS, Microsoft Azure, MongoDB Atlas

Collaboration and Communication

 Slack, Microsoft Teams

Analytics and Monitoring

Google Analytics, Mixpanel, New Relic, Datadog

Note: Apart from the technologies mentioned above, you need to consider the tech stack for advanced feature integrations. These technologies can be for accessibility, localization, push notifications, or offline functionality.

 

Step-by-Step Process to Develop Mobile Banking App

 

Plan your mobile banking app development wisely to avoid lengthy, complex, and time-consuming processes. Let’s understand the steps involved in building the mobile banking app.

 

1. Requirement Gathering

The first step is to understand your project requirements, app features for banks and users, the technology used, and other details to set a strong foundation for app development.

 

2. Prototype Development

Develop a wireframe or interactive prototype to get the initial idea of the app development. With this, you can ensure all the project stakeholders are on the same page throughout the development process.

 

3. Setting up a Robust Security System

In mobile banking apps, security is one of the significant concerns since it deals with sensitive user data like credit cards, debit cards, SSNs, etc.

Therefore, the next step is to consider security aspects or any regularity compliances.

 

4. Mobile Banking App Design

After getting all of the project details and initial design approval, your team can start designing an interactive user interface.

 

5. Final Development Process

After creating the app design, your back-end team can come to action for creating the robust app infrastructure, integrating third-party services, and coding the required features and functionalities. This step will ensure the full-fledged development of a mobile banking app.

 

6. App Launch and Maintenance

After developing the app, you can release it on the required platform, be it App Store, Play Store, or client-server.

Also, app maintenance is a critical part of the development process that ensures your application keeps running smoothly after the launch.

 

Examples of Top Mobile Banking Apps in the Market

 

Do you want to build a successful mobile banking app? Competitive analysis is one of the crucial steps of the discovery phase.

Consider some well-known banking apps while building your own application:

 

1. Citi Mobile

This mobile banking application utilizes industry-standard security protocols for data protection and integrates unique touch ID authentication.

With unique features like real-time alerts, in-app money transfer, touch ID/face ID, mobile check deposit, etc., it can cost you from $150,000 to $300,000 to develop an app like Citi Mobile.

 

2. Bank of America Mobile Banking

This mobile banking app introduced cardless ATM access and integrates and implements tokenization for secure cardless transactions. It can cost you over $180,000 to build an advanced banking app like the Bank of America Mobile Banking.

 

3. Chase Mobile

Some of the unique features of Chase Mobile that you can integrate into your mobile banking application are QuickDeposit to deposit checks from mobile devices, Zelle Integration for fast and secure P2P payments, Credit Score Monitoring, etc.

The development cost of this application can be over $110,000.

 

4. Ally: Banking & Investing

Take this mobile app as a reference if you want to implement forex trading functionalities and interactive financial education.

Moreover, users of this app leverage features like high-yield savings, cashback debit cards, and customization alerts.

 

5. Discover Mobile

The unique feature of this app is the Freeze/Unfreeze Card, enabling users to freeze or unfreeze their credit cards temporarily.

Also, the cashback rewards feature, spend analyzer, and paperless statements are to look out for.

 

The Cost of Building a Mobile Banking App in Total

 

With advanced decentralized technologies and interactive voice features, you can make your banking app more convenient and engaging.

However, keep in mind that the more complex and unique features you add to your application, the higher the mobile banking app development cost will be.

On average, mobile banking app development costs can vary as per the complexity level given below:

App Complexity

Estimated Cost

Development Time

Simple

$30,000-$70,000

3 to 6 months

Medium

$70,000-$120,000

6 to 9 months

High

150,000-$300,000

9+ months

 

Conclusion

 

We hope you now understand the development process, the cost, technologies, and other factors needed for app development.

As mentioned above, the mobile banking sector is growing exponentially. This showcases how lucrative this business opportunity can be. Therefore, it is high time for financial institutions to contact a Fintech app development company to achieve your project goals.

By developing user-centric, robust, and highly scalable applications, banking organizations can fulfill the high demands of users. With the latest trends and technologies and keeping your focus on data security, you can provide an advanced banking solution for your customers.