Budgeting applications have gained popularity as a convenient tool to keep track of spending and make savings as people continue to struggle with the financial insecurity brought on by the impending recession. Over the previous five years, downloads of the top 10 financial planning apps increased on average by 56%, according to the survey. The creation of personal finance applications has become very lucrative as a result.
Most likely the finest illustration is Mint, an app that has emerged as the de facto norm in the finance sector. The platform started as a simple investment tracker with a few settings, but it has now evolved into a 25 million-user AI-powered financial counseling platform.
Therefore, creating a Mint-like app could be a great alternative if you want to get into the financial industry to appeal to customers who want to manage their budget and impulsive spending. You will be guided through this procedure by Relevant.
Based on our expertise in developing an app like Mint, we’ll discuss the most recent trends, essential features, price structure, and technology stack. So let’s get started.
Personal Finance App Market Review
Your financial life needs continual control, whether that is by budgeting, making a strategy to pay off debt, or monitoring your credit. What could be more practical for this use than a mobile app that anyone can download on a smartphone or tablet? Because of their accessibility, mobile applications—not web versions—have emerged as the financial sector’s most promising market. Almost all users of today’s technology have at least one banking or finance app installed on their mobile devices.
Despite the complexity of money management strategies, contemporary finance software has greatly simplified and clarified them. It should come as no surprise that the market for personal financial apps is expanding at a CAGR of 5.7% and will surpass $1.49 billion by 2026. In the upcoming years, there will be a significant need for personal finance app development.
Budget App Market Trends And Major Players
If you don’t understand your users and the reasons they require such software, developing a personal finance app can be difficult. But if your budgeting tool can’t compete with the stiff competition, things get much trickier. Therefore, let’s familiarize ourselves with some of Mint’s primary rivals before designing an application similar to it:
The Mint financial planner software lets you link credit cards and bank accounts to keep track of your earnings and outgoings. It offers spending-based budget goals, as well as a summary of the daily budget. These objectives could change and grow in the future.
Mvelopes:
It is an additional option to the Mint that employs digital envelopes to assist users in managing and controlling their money. The app aids in managing your finances and prevents the spending of roughly 10% of your income.
EveryDollar:
Users may easily examine and manage their money using the app’s ability to see their income and expenses. They can also include categories that are appropriate for the budget and evaluate whether they go over or under.
PocketGuard:
Users can link all of their bank accounts in one location and manage their income and expenses using PocketGuard. This Mint substitute will show them how much money they have available for spending and let them know if they go over their allotted amount.
YNAB:
An application for tracking personal finances and expenses can help users save up to $600 in the first two months and more than $6000 in the first year.
Banking Apps Are Also In The Game
The area of personal finance management is actively being developed by conventional banks as well. Today, practically all banking software, such as Ally Mobile or Alliant Mobile Banking, incorporates budgeting tools. They can indeed compete with your upcoming goods, too. You can also sell the application to the bank, which is advantageous.
Virtual assistants and chatbots are piling on.
In addition to banking apps, FinTech chatbots operating in the same market will be your rivals. They might be standalone apps or add-on components for platforms like financial platforms. They monitor spending, provide choices for budgeting, and, conversely, offer personal finance advice. To name a few FinTech chatbots, there are Cleo, Plum, and Digit.
The Audience Is Growing More Youthful
The proportion of people under 15 around the globe is about 25%, and it rises yearly. As a result, a lot of personal budget management apps cater to younger users. Due to this, educational applications for children and teenagers have gained popularity; such examples are Greenlight, Plan’it Prom, and BusyKid.
Cryptocurrencies Are Here To Stay
A useful feature of an app is the ability to connect cryptocurrency wallets in the same manner as bank accounts. The ability for consumers to monitor and control their cryptocurrency spending has emerged as a competitive advantage. Managing Bitcoin balances is possible with apps like Mint. Other programs, like OSOM and Coinbase, are mostly concerned with controlling cryptocurrency wallets and exchanging cryptocurrency.
Multifunctionality Can Be Requested
An app for managing personal finances should help users track their income and expenses, gain financial literacy, simplify their budgets, and manage their wealth. The most popular personal financial applications serve as evidence that all of this demands substantial functionality.
What Do Customers Expect From Personal Finance Apps?
You must take into account the very minimum set of functionality needed by the market when deciding how to launch a financial application. However, you must slightly exceed users’ expectations to rank among the top FinTech software solutions. just how? Let’s talk about the nice-to-have characteristics that can persuade customers to pick your financial solution over that of your rivals.
Visualization Of Data
A budgeting software must have infographics, charts, and dashboards since they catch users’ eyes and leave a lasting impression. Additionally, information is easier to grasp and handle when it is presented in charts and infographics. Check out Airthings’ useful dashboard to see how Relevant’s developers worked with the Norwegian tech startup to provide air quality data in an engaging, interactive way.
Gamification
Mint is a personal financial smartphone app that is not intended to be enjoyable. However, it need not be monotonous. Gamification is the process of adding game-like components to a budgeting app to boost participation. To encourage cost savings or something else, you might include features like a points system, prizes, and achievements to keep users interested.
Strong Standards Compliance And Security
Sensitive data needs to be secured in all apps. However, since budgeting software provides direct access to a user’s financial accounts, security is crucial. According to this survey, consumers are most afraid of losing control over financial and banking data. High security is therefore essential for a budgeting tool.
A personal money management app must also follow current guidelines for data processing and administration, including GDPR and ISO 270001. In addition, always perform security audits and penetration tests, and create apps with safe cloud infrastructure. And if you’re unsure about how to adhere to the criteria, visit one of Relevant’s advisors.
Adaptation To Banks And Payment Methods
The capability to link all of your accounts together is the obvious benefit of a budgeting tool. This ease allows an app to cover and keep track of all customer money in one location. To achieve this, however, the budgeting tool must offer connectivity with several banks and payment systems.
AI-Driven Financial Support
You may provide extensive insights into financial counseling using AI, along with suggestions and recommendations on how to successfully control their spending to achieve goals. Additionally, AI technology can classify spending automatically and provide a comprehensive picture of which category customers spend the most money in. It enables you to differentiate your finance app from the competition by heavily customizing it.
Customer Service And Advice
We hope that the users of your budget tracker and planner software won’t have any issues or questions, but everything is possible. So it also won’t hurt to offer 24/7 assistance, consultations, and quick customer service.
An Overview of Mint
Because it provides several essential advantages, including automation and strong security, Mint is an excellent case study for companies trying to expand their customer base with a personal money management solution. However, there are some drawbacks. Let’s examine Mint in more detail.
Mint’s Functionality
Pros
Cons
Accounts aggregation
Categorization and budgeting
Setting financial goals
Bill payment tracker
Savings tips and investment analysis
Reports
Refinancing
Multi-factor authentication
Notifications and alerts
MintSightsPersonalized offers
Help and support
User-friendliness
All user finances overview
Amazing UI/UXHigh-security
Actionable savings tips and financial advice
Maintaining credit score
Live updates on any financial activity
No support for multiple currencies
There is no support for users from outside the US and Canada
Categorization issues
There is no separation between a user’s income and budget
Only personal accounts
How Mint-Like Apps Receive Revenue
The use of Mint is free. The issue is, how does the app make money? Well, the Mint has a very ingenious method of making money.
Freemium. A minimal set of personal finance software functions is available for free using this popular monetization strategy, but additional functionality can be purchased.
Service for credit monitoring. Mint provides free basic credit reporting. However, for $16.99 a month, it offers consumers access to the premium reporting tool Mint Credit Monitor.
Advertisements Within Apps. The main goal of this monetization strategy is to generate revenue by charging consumers for third-party advertisements based on their past transactions. The advertisement might be in a banner, a native ad, a full-screen ad, or a video. Additionally, customers can pay to stop seeing adverts.
Subscriptions. By using this monetization technique, all of your app’s functions will require a monthly cost from your consumers.
Aggregated Financial Data For Sale. By collecting financial data on consumer patterns and selling it to other parties for advertising, market research, and marketing initiatives, you can make money. This tactic is used by several apps, including the paid software Mint. This monetization strategy entails acquiring your app just once and giving consumers access to every function.
Referral Commissions. When users purchase the financial products your app advertises, you profit. For instance, the Mint provides goods and services such as credit cards, insurance, loans, and many others. The app is compensated for referring users each time they follow Mint’s recommendations.
How to Create an App Similar to Mint: A Step-by-Step Guide
You are now ready to follow a step-by-step development guide for your financial app now that you are aware of all of its features and monetization options.
Step 1: Perform An Initial Analysis
Planning and research into the market and the commercial viability of your product are the first steps in a preliminary analysis. The project’s advantages and disadvantages, as well as any potential hazards, are being evaluated at this time. The outcome of the activity should serve as proof that the project will either be continued or abandoned.
Our experts’ advice: The study must have a precise and comprehensive scope to guarantee that crucial elements that affect decision-making are not overlooked.
2. Identify your Target Market
It’s wonderful that you have decided to carry on with the project. It’s important to specify your target market to comprehend the problems and problem-related pain spots of your users. You can only establish the feature set and create an efficient marketing strategy after getting to know your users.
Advice from our experts: To increase your chances of success, focus on markets with minimal entry barriers, such as elders, families, or students.
Step 3: Compile a list of the specifications.
Make a list of the requirements for size, quantity of features, functionality, and other factors. Ranging the features in terms of relevance comes after the set of features has been determined. Using this method, you may decide which features are most important to have in the app.
Our experts’ advice is to be as specific as you can when describing the needs. Your future team will find it simpler and clearer to create a finance app as a result.
Step 4: Select a technology stack
Choosing the tools and technologies you’ll need to implement this solution will depend on the features you’ve opted to include in your personal finance app. Both native and cross-platform budgeting apps are available for development. If you choose the native strategy, you will need to hire two development teams to create two distinct apps using various technologies.
Our experts’ advice: Swift or Objective-C can be used by developers to create iOS applications. The team’s tech stack might comprise Java or Kotlin for an Android app. These include the Flutter and React Native development frameworks, which can be used to construct a cross-platform personal finance application.
Step 5: Put a team together.
Remember that developing the “next Mint” in terms of personal finance apps will involve technological know-how and a thorough understanding of the industry you’re entering. Therefore, you need to hire experts who can create a profitable financial product. Those on one team responsible for creating a unique money management app are:
A project manager
UX/UI designer
A minimum of two (or more, depending on the project’s complexity and deadlines) mobile developers
a minimum of two backend engineers
2 QA engineers
Our experts’ advice: You can engage experts at a much cheaper cost by outsourcing app development. You can hire outside developers to create an app from scratch or only to temporarily bolster your company’s capabilities.
Step 6: Create an MVP
A team can get the most verified customer learning possible with the least amount of work by creating a minimum viable product (MVP). The product with the highest ROI is split by risk, technically speaking.
Advice from our experts: When selecting the limited functionality to include in your MVP, you must be strategic. Your developers can scale up the software by adding more customer-centric features once the MVP’s client retention rate is adequate.
Step 7: Decide on a monetization plan
What revenue sources will your financial application use? Consider a monetization plan based on the preferences of your target user base and the advantages of your software.
Our experts’ advice: Go back to the section on how apps like Mint generate revenue and select what you want. You can create a special strategy or mix other app monetization techniques.
Step 8: Continue with the UX/UI design stage.
Financial services require UI/UX designs that are well-structured, aesthetically pleasing, and user-friendly. Any choice in the personal financial app must be accessible in no more than three steps.
Our experts’ advice is to balance minimalism with enticing aspects, use straightforward language, and avoid overwhelming customers. To prevent material that needs to be read, try to replace the lengthy block of text with visuals like captivating images or animations.
9. Begin the development stage.
To integrate all the elements of the finance app appropriately, the development needs trained specialists and competence. The functionality of the financial application is gradually implemented by the developers utilizing the chosen tech stack after the task scope has been approved.
A word of advice from our professionals: At Relevant, we typically allocate two seasoned front-end and back-end developers to this stage.
10. Test your application
Examine the functional and non-functional elements of your finance app using manual and automated testing. While automated testing helps obtain fast product feedback and increases test coverage, manual testing allows QAs to find defects from the very beginning of the software development cycle.
Our experts’ advice: Include testers in the main phases of development to make sure hazards are promptly eliminated.
Step 11: Open your personal finance app and continue using it.
Launch your financial application in production as soon as all of the information has been confirmed. To address product discrepancies, and patch issues, and continue updating, offer follow-up application support.
Our experts’ advice: Don’t forget to advertise your app on social media, through paid advertisements, and other places. Additionally, be sure to deploy your product by Apple Store or Google Play recommendations to avoid publishing complications.
Development of personal finance applications
In essence, 2000–2500 hours go into creating a personal budget management tool like Mint. Let’s now compute the total cost of development using the standard rate for engineers:
UI/UX Design: $ 15,000 for 375 hours at a rate of $40.
iOS application development: 780 hours at a rate of $36 is $ 28,080.
Development of a server-side app: 920 hours times $36 is $33 120.
Development of applications for clients: 270 hours multiplied by $36 is $ 9,720.
Total estimated expense: $85,920.
Conclusion
By concluding the blog, we hope that you were able to gain full knowledge on creating an app similar to Mint. If you are planning to create an app like Mint and looking for a fintech app development company, then you should check out Appic Softwares.
We have an experienced team of developers who can use all the latest technologies to craft your app.
