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Investing app development is suddenly becoming popular, which as a result is pushing online financial consulting firms including brokerage agencies and investment companies to embrace the digital landscape. For example, Robinhood investment app was launched back in 2013 and is considered a pioneer in the world of investment platforms – ever since many stock trading firms in Europe, the USA, and Australia have endorsed investment apps.
Everyone in the investment industry is trying hard to have a strong foothold in the market by offering accessible and convenient ways to make money off of savings.
An investment application allows users to invest on the go either in the stock market or other financial markets. Plus, these apps keep track of a user’s investments to generate a complete investment portfolio.
A stock trading application is a type/ example of an investment app through which interested parties can buy and sell shares of stock, including other investment products. These applications offer convenience to those who are regularly involved in stock trading.
Plus they eliminate the need for hiring individual brokers to negotiate agreements. Additionally, a stock trading app development starts with developing a back-end system or an investment platform that has all the data about the stock exchange or other services.
According to various studies, we can easily conclude that millennials and gen z are the emerging investors since 2019, and they seem to be changing the investment landscape.
Most of these young folks (almost 78%, under the age of 35) leverage apps like Robinhood to make meaningful investments and to purchase stocks. Moreover, the same age bracket says that they would like to invest in companies that are making a positive change in society.
Speaking of, the top 5 stocks that millennials are investing in belong to the global tech giants such as Apple, Tesla, Netflix, Facebook, and Amazon.
Demands are prompting entrepreneurs towards investment app development. Gone are the days when people needed to actually learn about how to invest in stocks or needed dedicated brokers. Because now, all you need is an application to manage your investment activities for you.
Below are some of the popular investing applications used around the world.
This investing app needs no introduction. The app was developed back in 2013. It’s a commission-free trading platform that had half a million users in 2014 – which climbed up to 13 million last year (2020).
If we talk about the revenue, it reached an estimated 180 million U.S. dollars in the second quarter of 2020, according to Statista.
It’s a trading app with the main target audience of traders and investors who are inexperienced. It offers portfolio management according to an individual’s predetermined criteria.
This application is most suitable for those with regular investing habits and a focus on long-term savings. Acorns app started with 100,000 accounts in its first month and now has over 3.5 million users.
This app was launched back in 2013 and has secured $40 million in funding until now. Just like Robinhood, it is also a commission-free trading platform.
It is a financial education app that offers personalized investment options, digital banking, real-time analytics, and education material. Users need only $5 to start trade with no additional fees.
This investing app is known among the community of Robo-advisors (financial advisors that provide investment management services with minimal human interaction). Unlike other investment apps, wealth front charges a nominal management fee. From initial goal-setting to investing – it offers a full package along with a user-friendly platform. Wealthfront manages over $4.6 billion from 100,000 users and raised $129 million in capital.
Speaking of Robo advisors, betterment app is a leader. It offers two account options: betterment digital and betterment premium.
Betterment digital has no account minimum however charges 0.25%, the same as wealth front for annual management, whereas users get certified financial planners through betterment premium account on 0.40% of assets and $10000 of account minimum.
Just like any other platform, investing in app development requires resources and effort.
Still, you need to make sure that the process is as smooth as it should be. Therefore, follow the simple steps to create an investment app, and ensure successful delivery.
The first step is to conduct market research for identifying investing app ideas that are lacking in the market and how your idea can fill in the gaps. You need to identify your customers’ pain points and issues.
Once you have identified the requirements, identifying the target audience becomes a lot easier. Additionally, competitor analysis is a very important aspect of your entire market research strategy.
This way you can easily analyze what your competitors are doing and what you can do differently to have an edge. Along with this market research help, you find the answers to the following questions:
A sharp business plan is always important especially if you are eyeing to make big money with your investing app.
You should know how much commission will be charged, what kind of services you will offer and the amount you will charge for the services. For example, Acorns charge $1 per month for its services. Plus users can also bag commission by referrals while trading.
The third step is to set up your app’s infrastructure. The architecture of your investment app is similar to that of a fintech application. You need to make sure that it is powerful, secure, and offers data visualization options in real-time.
Plus it should be fast and easily able to process huge volumes of data with immediate response time. Speaking of security, your investment platform should comply with all global regulations based on the regions such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Pay attention to which details you collect and how you use and process the data.
UX/UI design is exceptionally important for seamless and fast customer onboarding. Therefore, your app should stand out in terms of both experience and interface.
Do not overwhelm your user with too many pop-ups or registration forms. Keep it simple. Once they are successfully onboarded, make sure users can easily navigate through the app and data regardless of the investing app development platform it is built on, or the screen size.
Additionally, this is the stage where you decide the features and functionalities that you should have to deliver a smooth experience. We will discuss more about the features you should have in your app in the following sections, so stick around.
If you already have an in-house development team, well and good. But if you are a stock market app startup, for example, the best advice is to outsource seasoned project-based stock market app developers who are well versed with how to make stock market apps in android or iOS both.
An outsourced team of developers is a perfect solution since they have ample experience working with similar solutions and know about the trending tech stacks, to begin with. Most importantly, they are cost-effective and ensure the high quality of the final product.
Now that you have mapped out your user journey and built a fully functioning prototype – time to bring your idea to reality by coding.
If more than one developer is working on the same code, make sure it has a simple syntax and is flexible enough for others to easily understand and make changes.
Development is the most lengthy step so make sure you have an agile development approach in place to ease it out. Pro-tip is to test the product with each build for quality assurance to save time later on.
After the initial release, track your app for performance, speed, and bugs for improvements. If you have outsourced services from a software development company, they will take the app maintenance load off of you and take full responsibility to technically manage the app for smooth performance.
Trading apps are a type of investment application that requires a full team of the front end, back end, iOs, android developers along with UX/UI designers, business analysts, project managers, QA engineers, DevOps, and a team lead.
Therefore the costs depend not only on the complexity of the features but also on the team composition, and development time needed to complete the project.
Most importantly, the cost varies from company to company. An investment app with a basic user interface and must-have features ranges from $50,000 to $70,000. Whereas complex app projects would cost at least $100,000, if not more.
Fahad is PM at ARFASOFTECH but has a knack for writing. He enjoys writing about the latest technologies and evolving trends. Most of his writings revolve around trending technologies and their integration into operations.
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