How Much Does It Cost to Build a FinTech App: Detailed Estimation

What's a cost to build FinTech app? It’s quite a demanding question, but there’s no standard answer. The fintech app development cost depends on two main factors: time and developers’ rates. In turn, the time will depend on platforms, the complexity of features, and server architecture’s requirements. The developers’ rate will depend on the developer's experience and location.

In this article, we’re going to flesh out the cost to develop fintech app of popular types: banking, lending, investment, insurance, and consumer finance.

Fintech is quite a broad term, including different types of applications. As a financial advisor with extensive years of experience (since 2011), we’ve pointed out five main types of fintech apps and estimated them feature by feature:

• Banking app
• Lending app
• Investment app
• Insurance app
• Consumer finance

The mobile banking app development cost consists of the client-side and admin panel costs.The customer side allows you to check your current balance and transaction history, provide transfers to other bank accounts, schedule payments, send P2P payments, and look for ATMs that are free for you to use, and more. An admin panel is established for managing users' profiles and money transactions.

The most popular examples of digital banking apps are:

• Monobank. Monobank mobile app offers various options: from free money transfer and credits to cashback and shakes to pay. Cashback allows users to select two categories of expenses and get 1% to 20% cashback from purchases.
• Revolut. Revolut is a banking application that focuses on global spending. You can transfer money worldwide with no hidden commissions, buy cryptocurrency, gold and control your transactions with in-built analytics.
• Chime. Chime offers three separate accounts that work together: spending, saving, and secure credit. There are various options for savings like round-up transactions, saving from every purchase, and debit cards. Also, Chime has a SpotMe feature. It’s a service that allows you to make payments from a debit card that overruns your account limit without overdraft fees. Limit ranges from $20 to $100.

Now, let’s take a look at the approximate banking fintech app development cost and time.

Peer-to-peer lending apps connect people who’re ready to loan money with the people who need money. Such apps allow users to borrow a little cash against their next payment, and you can create one, for example, while build a DeFi app.

The top three lending apps are:

• ZestFinance. ZestFinance is an AI-based lending app. It utilizes machine learning to collect data on people with little or no credit history. Based on this information, the service defines the number of money lenders will lend to particular users.
• Dave. Dave provides users extra cash (up to $100) if they need money to cover an expense before the next payment. The service doesn’t have any interest in cash advances, but users need to pay a monthly membership commission to use the app. Besides, users receive alerts when their balance is getting low to avoid overdraft fees.
• Brigit. This service offers cash advances (from $50 up to $250), but users need to pay $9.99 per month for the Brigit Plus plan to access “instant transfers” and other valuable features. Brigit has a budgeting tool that allows users to monitor their spending and “Brigit score” model that measures the three financial metrics: bank account health, spending behavior, and earnings profile.

Insurance apps simplify working with insurance and help customers solve existing problems in the industry. There are different types of niche-specific insurance apps. It can be:

• App for claims settlement. This app is designed to manage handlers' requirements (GEICO, April Easy Claim, Pocket Agent).
• Apps for sales management. It allows workers to quickly and effortlessly get access to the sales and marketing materials (PandaDoc, RingCentral, Formstack).
• App for travel insurance. These apps provide people information regarding health and security in the destination country, weather info, and flight changes (AIG Travel Assistance app, Chubb Travel Smart, Goose).
• App for car insurance. Car insurance apps allow users to gather all necessary insurance information regarding the car accident since drivers use cameras to take a photo of the accident (Cuvva, Root, GEICO).
• Apps for insurance brokers. These apps allow brokers to manage insurance product life-cycles and provide customers with an omnichannel experience allowing for meeting their clients’ needs where they are, on any device.

All these apps have different functionality, thus the final price will depend on industry-specific features. We’ve calculated the cost based on general features that are mostly similar for different types of insurance apps.

Investment platforms allow users to review and invest in multiple financial assets. Investment management solutions help investors to increase their investment performance by providing them with relevant analytics data.

If you want to create an investment app, look at the following solutions for ideas:

• Acorns. The app is oriented for individuals that don't have spare money for investment. Acorns offers to invest step wise. The app is tracing purchases of your credit and debit card and wound up every purchase from them to a round sum. The margin is set aside in the investment portfolio. Acorns also offer financial videos and articles to help customers increase ROI. It lets users deposit and withdraw money at any time.
• Robinhood. Robinhood allows investors to invest money in Bitcoin, stock, shares, and other options at no commission trading. Users can read information about investment portfolios before buying cryptocurrencies. The app provides users with real-time market data for the selected cryptos, coins, or options and sends users notifications about the changes.
• CNBC. CNBC isn’t a direct trading app. It enables brokers with all necessary financial news, live streams, stock alerts, and interactive news to keep up-to-date with the latest updates. Moreover, users receive breaking news alerts when their stocks are at risk.

This type of app is used for managing users’ finances. It helps them to plan their spending so as not to spend more than planned.

The following solutions are good examples of financial apps for money management:

• Mint. Mint is a top personal finance app, allowing users to track their income and expenses with ease. This app can be synchronized with multiple credit cards, PayPal, and bank accounts.
• MoneyLion. MoneyLion provides users with finance and loan advice. Thus, it lets them manage their finance efficiently. People can access checking accounts without fees, entirely managed investment account, cash advance, and up to 10% cashback.
• Finch. Finch streamlines personal finance for users. The app pays the bills, sends money to friends instantly, creates groups for sharing bills, and shares links with user’s friends via the pay friends option. The service provides users with details of how often they visit the shop and how much money they spend in a month.

So, let's find out the final price of creating a fintech app by the type of the application. The estimate below are based on the $50/h rate. It’s an average software development rate in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE region).

How did we calculate the final cost to develop a fintech app by each type? We added development and non-development time. After that, we multiplied the time by the team’s hourly rate. We calculated the MVP version of each service. If you want to add more advanced features, you’ll likely pay more.

Notice: The time and cost to build fintech app above is approximate. Feel free to contact our Senior Business Analysts to get a custom feature list and project estimate of your fintech project.

The price can also change drastically depending on your requirements. You can hire local developers to work remotely as a part of your company or assemble an in-house team. However, hiring local developers can be a complex and costly task. Also, you will bear full responsibility for the project’s result choosing in-house development.

While finding out how to develop a FinTech app, in order to save some budget, you can consider finding fintech app developers nearshore or offshore. This option doesn’t require additional expenses like renting the office or buying hardware, and you don’t need to be responsible for the management and product delivery.

However, fintech app development cost estimation can differ from country to country, ranging from $350,000 in North America to $140,000 in Asia regions.

We’ve analyzed fintech app developers’ rates in different regions and estimated the cost of developing fintech app mentioned above.

You may encounter time differences and language barriers when choosing a foreign company. But experienced fintech vendors like Cleveroad optimize their software delivery process to avoid communication delays and misunderstandings. We form a communication plan with our clients to hold meetings on the convenient time for the clients.

Fintech application development involves a number of factors that influence its cost. These elements, from technical intricacies to regulatory considerations, are critical in shaping the overall cost of fintech application development. In this section, we examine factors that affect the cost of developing a fintech app and guide you in the complexities of creating digital financial solutions.

The complexity of a fintech app plays a pivotal role in determining costs. Simple fintech app development cost featuring basic functionalities like account balance checks are lower than moderate or complex apps integrating advanced features such as investment tracking and AI-driven analytics.

The choice of development platform is another crucial factor. Opting for native app development, where separate applications are built for iOS and Android, might incur higher cost to build fintech app than cross-platform development, which utilizes frameworks like React Native or Flutter to create a unified codebase for both platforms. Flutter app development services help to reduce time and cost to create fintech app up to 50%, providing universal solution that can work on diverse platforms.

Security measures significantly impact cost to develop fintech app. Basic security tools with standards for your app, like username/password authentication, is less expensive than implementing advanced security features like biometric authentication, secure API connections, etc. Data encryption and privacy measures also impact the price. Implementing basic encryption protocols for user data security is more cost-effective than incorporating enhanced encryption with advanced algorithms and stringent privacy controls for the fintech industry.

Integration with financial institutions can significantly impact cost of building fintech app for your business. Essential integration involving linking to external financial services for fundamental transactions is less costly than advanced integration, encompassing interaction with multiple banks, payment gateways, or investment platforms.

The unique UI/UX design contributes to fintech app development cost. While design for a standard fintech app can cost lower, opting for a custom app design featuring unique elements, animations, and an intuitive interface increases development expenses.

Regulatory compliance is a crucial factor that you should consider when you plan to develop a FinTech app. In the case of fintech applications, maintaining a wider range of regulations has a cost impact, given their need to meet stringent standards for security, data protection, and financial services, which involves meeting specific regulatory requirements such as GDPR, PCI DSS, or regional regulations.

The integration of payment gateways (e.g., Stripe, Braintree, etc.) is a significant factor of fintech app development cost. Essential integration that supports standard payment methods (e.g. credit cards, wire transfers, PayPal) is less costly than advanced integration, which includes various payment options, subscription models, or even cryptocurrency financial transactions.

Backend development complexity also influences fintech development app estimate. A simple backend with a primary server setup and database management is less expensive than a complex backend designed to handle extensive data and user interactions robustly.

The technology stack chosen for development plays a critical role in cost to build fintech app. Utilizing standard technologies (e.g., common programming languages and frameworks, 3-rd party APIs, databases, etc.) is generally more affordable than implementing emerging technologies such as blockchain app development cost or machine learning.

Testing and quality assurance is an integral part of the development process and requires additional cost to develop fintech app. Basic testing for functionality and security is less costly than comprehensive testing covering usability, performance, security, and regulatory compliance.

The geographical location of the financial app development company influences the cost to develop fintech app. Hiring local app developers with higher labor costs may incur more extraordinary expenses compared to engaging an offshore development team from regions with lower labor costs. For example, hiring fintech developers from the US may cost you $100 - $200 per hour, but fintech specialists from Central and Eastern Europe will ask you for $50 - $80 per hour.

The structure of the development team plays an important role in the development of fintech applications. An effective team should include professionals with different skills and expertise. Below is the list of key professionals that may be required for successful fintech application development:

• Business Analyst
• Project Manager
• Solution Architect
• Developers (Frontend and Backend)
• UI/UX designer
• QA engineers
• DevOps

You can use staff augmentation if you don't need a whole team but only a few specific specialists. This approach allows you to bring in individual specialists with the necessary fintech expertise, expanding your internal team as needed.

Each factor contributes uniquely to the overall app development cost. The specific project requirements and priorities will determine how each factor impacts the budget. To put it simply, the fintech app development cost may vary anywhere between $90,000-$300,000+.

Cleveroad is a FinTech software development company with over 12 years of experience in domain. We help banks, financial establishments and institutions automate processes, improve transaction security, and improve finance and banking operations by creating modern FinTech software solutions using the best tools and technologies.

Among the solutions our team develops within our FinTech software development services are electronic trading platforms, digital wallets, cryptocurrency platforms based on blockchain, financial planning and management applications, the creation of new banks, etc. To ensure the expanded functionality of our fintech solutions, we integrate various 3rd-party tools and solutions, such as payment gateways, CRM systems, Electronic Resource Planning (ERP), Blockchain, fraud detection, NFC and GPS technologies, etc.

To estimate the cost of application, we at Cleveroad provide two types of estimates: Rough and Detailed. The Rough estimate is divided into 2 phases: Solution and Discovery:

Solution design rough estimate is done at the very beginning of the project and is based on the team's experience in similar projects. It considers objectives, primary scope of work, complexity level, constraints, potential risks, and mitigation plans. These elements, coupled with container specifications, shape the fundamental non-functional requirements. Utilizing this information, we generate a first cost estimation and proposal for the project.

Discovery rough estimate is more accurate and extensive. We analyze business processes, refine features, and outline non-functional requirements. This detailed insight informs a revised estimate covering preparatory tasks, development specifics, integration needs, non-development documentation, and enhancement suggestions, ensuring a more accurate and customized project proposal.

Finally, after the Discovery Phase, we start the development by preparing a detailed estimate, which is the most accurate. The estimate encompasses comprehensive documentation, non-development aspects, integrations, and relevant suggestions.

To demonstrate our expertise in FinTech, we invite you to review some of our clients' successful cases from our portfolio:

• Micro-investment platform with SAMA-compliance
• Property investment plastform with advisor portal
• Online services ecosystem for Investment Bank
• Broker research platform for financial analysts
• VOD platform for NFT artists, fans and buyers