Creating A Top-Notch Financial App With Advanced Cybersecurity

Uploaded on 2023-11-27 in FREE TO VIEW, BUSINESS-Services-IT & Telecoms, BUSINESS-Services-Financial

Brought to you by COAX Software

Technological innovations aren’t just about how to make life easier for services better. The evolution of FinTech is closely interconnected with how sophisticated and complex counterfeit, fraud and scam strategies become.

While you can transfer any sum of money with a single tap, the same swipe might be a reason for mammoth financial losses.

New challenges require urgent and well-thought-out decisions. Just consider the number of FinTech startups and how accelerated the industry’s development is projected to be - as of May 2023, over 9,500 in the EMEA and more than 11,000 in the United States. Given the ever-increasing audience of the market - i.e., a drastic shift from 197 million in 2021 to 215 million users by 2025, in the US only - it is crucial to keep improving the quality and efficiency of online banking solutions to maintain the trend flow.

What is the current role of cybersecurity in FinTech and what standards are better to opt for? Stay tuned to check it out!

The Importance Of Cybersecurity Solutions In Financial Technology

In 2023, stories about finance cybercrimes don’t seem surprising anymore - their scalability is truly gaining momentum. Cyberattacks, data leaks, and system breaches, to mention a few, have already become common issues to deal with. The main purpose is always to violate the network’s security and privacy measures to obtain sensitive details and take the most out of them.

In addition to costing millions of dollars, an effective attack could damage a company’s trustworthiness and lead to its bankruptcy and failure in the market.

Here are some case studies to check and analyze in more detail:

Equifax - it is probably one of the most famous agencies in the USA to deal with the personal data of over eight million citizens and monitor their credit histories. In just a mere couple of days, the organization lost around $4 billion because of one of the most massive data leaks in its history, excluding an extra $2 billion spent to cover the consequences of the breach.

They could have just invested up to $200,000 to safeguard their system with high-end security measures and avoid such a disastrous experience.

TransUnion - in this case, the success of hacker operations put more than $22 million at risk.

Qubit Finance - the price tag of this attack on a smart DeFi protocol from Binance was a mammoth $80 million.

The OP Financial Group - even staples of finance in local economies aren’t fully protected from malicious actions of ill-minded hackers. In this case, the largest financial establishment in Finland couldn’t protect its system from a successful phishing strategy, claiming payments from its customers.

As evidence shows, building a secure and optimization-friendly system from scratch is a functional approach to rescue a business from cybersecurity challenges in FinTech. When it comes to building a custom application, it is essential to make app development processes data-driven and focus on strong data protection measures that really work. Let’s delve deeper into the prospective features and tools to maintain the desired degree of efficiency and safety for customers’ online banking operations.

Expert Tips To Launch A Secure & Multifunctional Fintech Application

The need for customizing and boosting the quality of security protocols and measures is clear - mobile banking services are the most popular version of online financial solutions for over 43% of Americans, as statistics show. To stand the test of time and competition, a newcomer in the market has to consider several crucial performance metrics:

Security compliances with GDPR, PCI-DSS, and other standards to deliver credible financial services for domestic and international users;

A robust technological architecture of the app, ensuring its capacity to cope with large volumes of data and several tasks simultaneously and without downtime;

Market research and data analytics to define what features to add to cater to customers’ preferences and needs;

Understanding the target audience and its demographics to receive valuable and actionable insights.

While the general approach to building a mobile app for FinTech purposes won’t be drastically different from creating any other program, don’t take this simple introduction for granted. To obtain the desired results, exploring the best cybersecurity practices is a must. This way, you will be able to protect your position in the industry and maintain a great reputation in the long run.

Now is the time to describe the FinTech app development process in more detail. Mind the gap!

Brainstorming & Analysis - Set Measurable Goals And Values

First and foremost, all the preparations begin with understanding any whys, whens, and hows before entering the market. A FinTech application is a broad term to define a solution for a particular financial service:

Loan sanction;
Mobile banking;
Investment and budget management;
Insurance application;
Cryptocurrency exchange;
Crowdfunding networks, and so on.

By setting clear goals, it will be easier to define what tools and security norms to stick to for the desired outcome. In turn, it will help optimize your expenditures and avoid resource waste on the features your audience might not
require at all.

Narrow Down The Palette Of Options

Now that you know what you want, it is the right moment to consider what functionalities and core features will guarantee achieving project goals in the most affordable, secure, and productive manner. If you feel stuck and are afraid of missing crucial points, start by building a customer journey and development roadmap for your financial product.

Aside from basic security tools like two-factor authentication, feel free to add advanced solutions that will boost the performance of the target app. For instance, it might be AI-empowered face recognition to take biometrical data authorization to the next level. Real-time updates and reports, as well as divergent account management functions, will come in handy.

UX and UI Considerations

Thriving to offer the best services, businesses frequently go beyond their budget limitations and strive for overly complex and sophisticated interfaces. With the help of minimum viable products, you can get feedback and reviews of your project at the early stages of its development and avoid huge investments in post-launch troubleshooting.

Overall, the plan is to keep things simple yet aesthetic and efficient. Ensure the app’s smooth performance - up-market accessibility, fast load speeds, intuitive navigation, readable and informative content, responsive design, and much more.

Development, Testing & Launch

Choosing a tech stack that suits your needs is half the battle. Even if you aren’t proficient in coding and programming languages, there are numerous alternatives to training your staff — from outsourcing skilled and credible developers to seeking intuitive app development builders for novice users.

Don’t forget about running several tests to estimate the app’s performance. For example, you can check the value of keyword research and customer targeting with SEO tools like Serpstat and Ahfers. Google offers a wide range of services to see how your app works in real-time. Stick to agile methodologies to detect issues before the launch and fix them on time.

Post-deployment Maintenance & Care

The rule of thumb is simple - you should always keep on examining your app’s efficiency and other metrics to guarantee customer satisfaction and brand recognition. Once your financial product is successfully launched, it is not enough to harvest the results of your app development efforts.

It is crucial to continuously analyze its functionality, scalability, etc. During the brainstorming stage, take your time to consider what feedback analytics features to include to simplify the collection and interpretation of client reviews and impressions of the service. Such insights will be sufficient to deepen your understanding of the target audience and its needs. You will be able to optimize your marketing strategy, the more you learn about user behavior patterns.

Exclusive Practices To Set High Cybersecurity Standards For Your Business

To avoid reputational damage, juridical implications, data loss, and other negative consequences of the network’s lack of security and safety, it is important to build your custom application with the best tactics in mind:

Secure data storage - while keeping the product’s architecture simple yet flexible, it is a well-thought-out measure to protect its core data storage approach. Aside from the right choice of services, encryption technologies will prove their efficiency in the long run. For beginners, it is essential to set the right mindset and avoid storing tons of sensitive data in one place. Opting for payment gateway systems may be a marvelous solution.

Tailored to market trends and security standards - without complying with industry regulations, you will face legal implications really soon. Protect your prospective users with GDPR, KYC, AML, and other norms - set your performance and reliability bar high from the very beginning.

Secure coding - by smart coding without hidden vulnerabilities, you can automatically make even the simplest system better than a multi-operational application with dozens of bugs. Secure coding is a highway to achieving the desired cryptography practices, authentication styles, signup information management, account validation, payment verification, and so on.

Data encryption - it is a modern must-have feature to include to back up any FinTech app’s trustworthiness and minimize the risks of data loss and leaks before, during, and after money transfers. Even if some part of the information is hacked, encryption and blockchain technologies won’t let vulnerabilities spread further within the system.

Multi-factor authentication - although some users don’t like to spend minutes signing in and verifying their identity, it is a great tactic to ensure your password isn’t the only barrier on the way to stealing your funds. Biometrical authentication methods are quite popular and credible nowadays. AI-based face recognition is the next turn to take for novice members of the mobile app development community.

APIs - you can integrate third-party tools and resources with the help of application programming interfaces. This strategy is an excellent measure to restrict unauthorized access to the system and boost the overall app’s functionality.

Last but not least, your project’s success depends on your dedication and attention to detail when selecting a reliable tech partner. This choice will define what cybersecurity standards and policies will be at your disposal. Although seasoned companies promise excellent results and don’t usually cause issues along the way, it isn’t the reason to omit new teams in the market - consider only licensed and certified organizations.

If you still hesitate, here are some methods to locate a perfect app development team for your goals in the FinTech industry:

Take into account its regulations and policies. SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are among the compulsory documents to obtain to deliver services in the market.

Consult with the target brand’s customer care representatives to check their approach in practice. Aside from getting hands-on experiences in real-time, feel free to check the testimonials of their former clients.

It is a normal practice to request a portfolio or additional pieces of information from the target brand. If their answers are too ambiguous, it is better to keep searching for green instead of red flags.

Budget Management: How Much Does Secure App Development In Fintech Cost?

There is no universal answer to the question. To get an as precise estimate as possible, start by identifying your goals and expectations from the final product. Overall, the more complex the layout is and the more advanced its features are, the higher the price tag to cover will be. Other important performance characteristics include:

The location of the outsourced development team to design and deploy a custom FinTech application;

The desired level of security and safety norms applied;

The type of FinTech application;

Its compatibility and scalability — more affordable hybrid solutions and more functional cross-platform and native systems.

The minimum investment for a full-service FinTech product starts at $50,000. The maximum limit varies a lot and can easily surpass the rate of $250,000 and more. Don’t hesitate to consult with several brands before signing an agreement and realizing your FinTech dream project in practice.

COAX’s Choice: Top Samples Of How To Build Successful Fintech Apps

Given the variety of systems and products in the industry, defining the best program is a matter of particular taste and preferences. Nevertheless, there are some common metrics to evaluate the quality of FinTech applications across markets. Let’s see what solutions have stood the test of hackers and other cybersecurity threats:

Robinhood - with FDIC insurance, 2FA, and other security measures, it is one of the best services to participate in stock trading.

PayPal — for those interested in instance, protected, and reliable peer-to-peer payments, it is a perfect application to test. It is a safe system for both personal and corporate goals in the FinTech industry.

Mint - if you wonder how to set a realistic budget and navigate your incoming and outgoing funds, it is an exquisite example of an application for controlling personal finances.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, establishing a sought-after application in the FinTech market is a multi-stage process. If you neglect the peculiarities of introducing security standards at any of the steps, you might spend more money to cover up your failure than to do everything precisely and profoundly from the start.

Follow the tips and suggestions from this guide to back up your finance app development project.

Serge Khmelovskyi is CEO at COAX Software

Image: Ralf Hahn

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