Mobile banking is a widespread trend of modern finance. Nowadays people want to manage everything by only using their smartphones and devices. Thus banks and other financial organizations start paying more attention to the adoption and integration of mobile banking services.
Mobile banking application development helps companies to meet the growing customer demands by enhancing customer experience. On the other hand, it allows users to enjoy personalized, paperless, and feature-rich financial services.
Find out more about key features, trends, and challenges in software development for banking and financial services in this article.
What are the Key Features of Mobile Banking?
The number of people using mobile banking apps is increasing. According to statistics, the share of mobile banking app users in Europe doubled between 2009 and 2019. Speaking of the USA, Insider Intelligence’s Mobile Banking Competitive Edge Study has found out that 89% of the respondents were using mobile banking applications, not to mention the millennials where the percentage reaches 97%.
To make financial operations easier, safer, and more efficient mobile banking software should include some of the essential features such as:
- Account creation. New mobile banking users have to create an account. In order to attract new customers software developers should ensure that this process is secure, clear, time-efficient, and user-friendly. It’s worth paying much attention to the safety issues including the ability of biometrical access.
- The ability to process the payments and make transactions is a key mobile banking app feature. To keep up with high customer expectations it’s necessary to foresee various solutions that can be appealing for the client such as balance view, transaction history, Peer-to-Peer payments, saving plans, and others.
- Clients of the bank want to ensure that in case of a problem there will be someone to help them resolve it. Thus, customer support should be available 24/7. Nowadays it has become possible with the help of chatbots. The queries can be separated according to the level of difficulty and then redirected either to a human assistant or to a bot.
- Push notifications. This type of communication can be helpful when it is necessary to send reminders, promotions, or alerts to a user. However, it should not be overused, otherwise, it can become a reason for a poor customer experience.
- Safety is the highest concern of the bank customers. Due to the increase of cybercrimes, mobile app users want to be sure that their personal data is safe. To enhance the security level of mobile banking application developers turns more often to biometrical information such as fingerprint scanners, voice security systems, or face recognition.
Besides these core mobile banking application features, it’s necessary to consider some extra functions to attract customer attention and boost customer engagement:
- Budget planner. Many people use mobile apps to manage their budgets. Including this feature in the banking app can help people to cut down the time they spend on doing that somewhere else. Moreover, the banking app can provide its users with the expense report that will facilitate control of expenditures.
- Apps for wearables. Nowadays wearables such as smartwatches and fitness bands are becoming a must-have. So, to meet customer needs and enhance customer experience it’s worth creating special banking applications for these devices.
- Advanced geolocation. This mobile banking app feature can let customers find ATMs or the nearest bank offices with minimal effort. Moreover, it can give valuable information about opening-hours, or send push notification if a customer is nearby.
Mobile Banking Trends to Dominate in 2021
A well-designed mobile banking application with a wide variety of handy features is the key to a company’s success in the ever-growing financial market competition. However, to develop one it’s crucial to keep up with the latest trends in mobile banking. Let’s look into some of them:
- Partnership with Fintech. Financial experts believe that in 2021 traditional banks and Fintech companies will cooperate more. Many specialists are discussing the option of open banking and BaaS platforms that will make the exchange of information between these institutions much easier.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). AI is a growing trend in almost any sphere. In mobile banking development, AI and ML can be used to build chatbots and voice assistants to resolve client’s problems without human help.
- Blockchain adoption. Blockchain integration can improve not only the security level of transactions but significantly increase customer experience by offering highly-transparent and robust solutions for managing data breaches, digital currencies, smart contacts, etc.
- Cardless operations. People have already got used to the idea of contactless payments. However, nowadays it is becoming popular to pay without using a card at all, for example, with an NFC module in the smartphone. Moreover, some banks offer their customers an opportunity to withdraw money without a card – just by scanning a QR code in the ATM through a mobile banking app.
Mobile Banking Challenges
When creating mobile banking apps developers have to deal with private information and governmental regulations. To make applications secure, trustworthy, productive, and legal in a specific country they have to face two main issues:
- Compliance with legal regulations. Different countries have different requirements for financial organizations. To build a robust and efficient banking app it’s important to find out all the information about legal compliance in a specific region.
- Application security. Mobile banking applications are time-saving and highly-efficient, however, many people still prefer to avoid using them because of security concerns. Thus, to overcome such stereotypes mobile app developers have to enhance banking app security by adding various authorization features (one-use passwords, fingerprint scans, etc.), build in alert notifications, data encryption, and other advanced safety features.
Conclusion
Mobile banking app development is a growing trend in the banking sphere. It provides customers with an easy and time-efficient way to manage financial operations. Moreover, it helps banks to reduce staff expenses and operational costs.
To create a successful mobile banking application it’s necessary to ensure that it is user-friendly, highly consistent, secure, and meets customer demands. Keeping up with the latest mobile banking trends and using the ones that fit better for your project needs will help your company to achieve leading market positions.
