How To Build A Trading App Like Robinhood?

Robinhood, a trading app that came out in 2013, quickly gained popularity and some big purchases. The business let people buy stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) without having to pay any fees. Young people and potential buyers who wanted to buy stocks and ETFs without having to pay brokerage fees were drawn to them.

Also, Robinhood’s mobile app and design are easy to use, so even people who have never traded before can get started quickly. It was successful because the trading app had a simple style, lots of useful features, and was easy for everyone to use. It also took the guesswork out of investing.

Because of how well it did, other investors put money into making trading apps and offering similar services. However, not everyone was able to understand how they designed and built their apps. Many people tried to make a similar app but failed. They made one that wasn’t as useful or easy to use, and it lost money instead of making it.

How would you go about making an app like Robinhood? Well, the process takes a long time, and you may need to double-check a lot of things before you spend money on it. We made this step-by-step guide with all the information you need to make a stock trading app like Robinhood to help you with the job. Look at it to learn how to do it!

Table of Content

• In what ways do stock trading apps work?
• A look at the market for trading apps like Robinhood
• What are some important things that trading apps must have?
• How to Make an App Like Robinhood for Trading Stocks?
• How does the app sell stocks and make money?
• How can Appic Softwares help you make an app like Robinhood that lets you trade?
• FAQ

In what ways do stock trading apps work?

Trading apps let people who are buyers buy and sell stocks, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), cryptocurrencies, and other financial assets. These tools help users with the whole process, from setting up an account to trading and putting orders into action.

They also show market data in real time, such as stock prices, indices, and other useful financial data. They help investors make smart choices by giving them technical analysis tools, charts, study reports, and portfolio management tools.

People who use the app can put in different kinds of orders, such as market orders, limit orders, stop-loss orders, and more. These orders tell users how much and for what price they can buy or sell goods.

However, online trade apps can do a lot of different things. You can make them for different uses and change their features based on the service you want to provide, the people who will use it, and your business needs.

A look at the market for trading apps like Robinhood

• To put that number in perspective, Robinhood made 565 million USD in the second quarter of 2021 and 380 million USD in the last quarter of 2022.
• Robinhood had 15.9 million daily users as of 2022, and that number keeps going up every day. Robinhood is used by more than 15 million users to trade and put money away. These numbers show how much the market wants financial apps and how they can grow.
• But Robinhood isn’t enough to show how big the market could be. So, here are some more numbers that show how well trading systems work.
• This platform for online trade had a market size of USD 9.32 billion in 2022. This amount will likely reach USD 9.94 billion by 2023 and USD 15.34 billion by 2030.
• Between 2022 and 2030, the market is expected to grow at a rate of 6.4% per year, or compound annual growth rate.
• When trading apps came out, they let anyone, even those who didn’t know much about trading, buy stocks and other financial assets. With these apps, more people could invest, even those who couldn’t get help from standard brokerage services.
• Every year, there are more and more people who want customized trading systems. Non-profit and government groups are pushing the need forward and finding good ways to meet it.
• Right now, there is a lot of competition in the market for trading apps. Both big financial companies and new companies are trying to get a piece of the action. To stay current, well-known broker banks have put money into making trading apps and released them.

What are some important things that trading apps must have?

Stock trading apps have a lot of different features that are designed to meet the needs and demands of users. To help you understand how it’s set up, here is a list of the most useful features.

Important Things About Trading Apps

Authentication of Users

Your trade app must have a simple, safe way to log in. Users should be able to sign up using a variety of methods, such as their email address, phone number, biometrics username and password, social networking sites, and so on.

The authentication must use trading rules, procedures, and laws that have been allowed by the government. Users should be able to follow these rules when they make accounts and use them.

Front panel

The dashboard is an important part of the app, and you need to hire skilled developers to make one that is both helpful and simple to use. When people are using your app, they should be able to go straight to the dashboard from the home screen.

Important information should be on the dashboard, such as the watchlist, balance, holdings, charts, order progress, user information, and so on. Don’t add features that aren’t needed or put too much information on the page. Stay simple and straight to the point.

Managing an investment portfolio

With the investment portfolio management tool, users can set up and run their own portfolios without the help of a broker or other third-party agent. Users can see and manage their holdings, transaction history, gains and losses, and the success of their portfolio as a whole.

Feature for Trading Stocks

You have to be able to do this in order to trade stocks. Users can trade stocks and do other jobs related to trading with the stock trading feature. The feature speeds up the process of buying, selling, and keeping stocks.

Find and Sort

Investors will find it easier to trade with this tool. After getting rid of the extraneous information in the ledger, they can get things in order and look more closely at the stocks and their trading records. They will spend less time looking for important information after filtering and sorting. You need to make sure it stays in your application.

List to Keep an Eye On 

Watchlist lets buyers put their favorite stocks on a “wish list” so they can buy them later. This way, they can keep track of the growth of certain stocks without having to look for them one by one.

News and Media

It’s important for sellers to know what’s going on in the market and in the world. Your app needs to have a newsfeed built in so that traders can get real-time trading news and market analysis from experts they can trust. Investors will be able to make better investment decisions with this knowledge.

Management of Transactions

You need to keep the tools you have for managing deals and connect them to payment gateways so that people can pay you online. Use best practices for security to protect this feature, and only users and management should be able to see the information.

Set up direct order routing

This is a more advanced tool that gives trading tips. This function has an algorithm that gets information from different financial sources and gives tips based on that information. Investors can look over these ideas and choose the best one to place their order.

Reminders and notifications

Real-time alerts like push messages and reminders keep traders up to date on the latest news. They tell you about things like dividends, earnings, news updates, account action, changes in the stock price (up or down), and a lot more.

But keep this function organized so that it doesn’t send notifications at random. It needs to be able to sort through information and send people the important stuff.

Stock trading systems also have a lot of other useful features, such as the ability to register users, view real-time data, create watchlists, charts, transaction histories and statements, research tools, customer service, and more.

How to Make an App Like Robinhood for Trading Stocks?

Here are some of the most important steps in the process of making a trading app:

Findings and Research

Do a lot of study on the market to find out who your target audience is and what they want, how they think, and what they do. Also, learn about your competitors and how they do business. Find out more about stock trading apps that are already out there. Also, keep an eye on current and future market trends, as well as possible growth possibilities.

Finally, test your app idea with possible users and funders to make sure it meets the needs and conditions of the market.

Define the app’s goals

Show the project’s goals, such as its main features, layout, audience, type of trading app, user needs, technology specifications, length, budget, and so on. Plan the next steps and pick a development method while putting important goals in order of importance.

Choose strategies for design and development

Learn as much as you can about your project and make wireframes and mockups to see how the app’s user interface (UI) and experience will look and work. In this case, you can look at Robinhood’s tech stack.

Stack of technologies for making trade apps

Pick the technology stack that you need for certain tasks. This includes the computer language, frameworks, third-party APIs, and libraries. Finally, make changes to the design based on user testing and comments.

Join the team working on the trading app

Making trading apps is not something that just anyone can do. It includes developing both the front end and the back end, integrating APIs, putting in place security measures, setting up servers, and a lot of other complicated tasks.

Even though you know how to do it, you can’t do it by yourself. You should hire mobile app developers to work on the project full-time. Also, when you hire people, make sure you get a team of experts who know a lot about development methods and techniques.

Quality Checking and Publishing

After making the trading app, it needs to be tested thoroughly to find technical errors, bugs, broken links, malicious code, and other security risks. Fix these risks and use tried-and-true security methods to keep the app safe. Then put the app on app stores like the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Support for maintenance and technology

Follow the rules and laws set by the government when releasing a trading app, and keep a close eye on how it does and what users say about it after it’s out there. Also, make sure to update the app often to fix bugs, add new features, and make it run faster and better.

Also, keep up with the latest changes in the financial markets and rules so that you can make your app fit those changes. Do what it says to do to get the results you want.

Banner for Making a Stock Trading App

• It costs a lot to make an app like Robinhood that lets you trade stocks.
• The total cost of making a trading app varies on a number of things, and it may change based on the following criteria.
• Designing a trading app
• Type of app and tech stack for the project
• Infrastructure for the front end and back end
• Features and functions of an app
• Platform for launch
• Problems with development, technical help, and upkeep 
• How many hired tools there are, what skills they have, and where they live
• You can choose to hire developers by the hour and pay them that way. The picture below shows how the prices break down for different places.

The average rate that coders around the world get paid per hour

Note: The prices shown in the picture may change depending on how much people want them and how the market changes. 

You can get a more accurate estimate by talking to a trading app creation company like Appic Softwares about the needs of your project. The expert team will tell you how much the project will cost and also offer a way to work together.

How does the app sell stocks and make money?

Robinhood was one of the first companies to offer investing without any fees. Young investors who wanted to make money through trading and investments were drawn to its no-commission fee plan. Robinhood also doesn’t charge to start or keep an account. There are no fees for investors to move money between accounts.

This makes you wonder how Robinhood makes money if it’s free to use. Anyway, the fintech company uses a number of different income stream models to make money. The types listed below are the most well-known ones.

Order Flow Payment 

Payment for Order Flow is a common way for trading firms to make money, and fintech apps do the same. In the PFOF approach, trading apps sell the trade orders of their users to market makers, who then carry out the trades.

This group of people who make the market pays the brokerage to let trade apps receive orders. The people who make these trades get paid by taking a small cut of the difference between the bid and ask prices of the listed stocks. 

Through the PFOF strategy, both stock trading apps and market makers get a small amount. But if they carry out a lot of orders, they get a big amount and make more money.

Paid subscriptions or services

Fintech apps charge a lot of money for special services or subscriptions, and they charge users both monthly and yearly. These paid services come with extra benefits like investment tools, study reports, market data, investment tips, and low-cost chances to invest on margin.

Rates of interest on securities and margin loans

Trading apps like Robinhood get people interested by lending money and stocks. When you borrow more than $1000, they charge a high interest rate. They make money by lending other people stocks.

Making money from an amount that wasn’t used

The money that investors have in their trading sites is put into savings banks. They make money from interest, which adds to their income. The amount is small, though, compared to other ways of making money.

Other Ways to Make Money

Trading platforms also work with other financial services, broker firms, or businesses to offer deals to users. These platforms pay advertising fees to these businesses. To make more money, they take sponsorships, sell market data, and push services from other companies.

You may also be interested in these powerful FinTech app development fields.

How to Use Best Practices to Keep Your Trading App Safe?

Trading apps are used for high-value financial deals and investors’ stock holdings. Cyber threats, theft, and hacking can easily get into these assets. When dealing with private financial information and deals, you need to be very careful. Also, keep these safety tips in mind to keep the dangers away.

Security Methods That Work

Common security techniques, such as SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protection, should be used to keep the app safe. Other than that, you should update the source to fix any holes.

Locking up data

Data encryption uses methods to turn data into codes that can be sent over protocols like HTTPS. These codes are safe and can only be seen by the person they are meant for. It keeps private data from being hacked while the computer and app are talking to each other. It also secures private data in the database to stop people from getting to it without permission and stealing data.

Authentication with Two Factors

This trade app needs more than just a username and password to protect itself from hackers. You need to add a two-factor authentication tool and let investors add their phone number, email address, fingerprints, and Face ID. This will make sure that all communication, trading, and transactions are completely safe.

Keeping user data safe

Keep only the user data that you need and use data reduction to stop data leaks and extra storage. To protect user privacy, you should follow data protection laws like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act). Along with that, set up strong tracking and logging to find and fix any security problems right away.

Controlling access based on roles

Role-Based Access Control is a security method that helps keep some users from getting into a system by using the roles that have been given to each user. Access is given based on the user’s defined role in the RBAC system. This way of doing things limits full access to everyone. This is a structured and scalable way to control who can view and change things in an app.

Regular checks for security

Do security checks and penetration tests on a regular basis to find and fix any possible holes in your app’s code and infrastructure. Regular security checks will help you stay safe online and stop bugs, hacking, scams, data leaks, and people who aren’t supposed to be there from getting in.

Set up secure session management

Use safe session management to keep things running smoothly and stop theft and forgery. Use session tokens to help you manage operations and app actions by setting session timeouts and ending sessions that aren’t being used.

How the trading industry works now and in the future

Traders who want to make money from trades are becoming more common every day, and this trend will continue. To keep up with the needs of the business, the trading industry is adopting new ideas and better technology. These are some hints of present and future trends:

• Cryptocurrency trade platforms are in high demand because of the rise of cryptocurrencies. 
• These platforms will become widely used very quickly.
• With fractional share investing, buyers can buy parts of shares even if they don’t have a lot of money. Retail buyers are increasingly using platforms that let them trade fractional shares.
• Robo-advisors are tools that trading platforms have made available to help investors build and handle investment portfolios that are tailored to their needs, budget, and financial goals.
• People who use social trading sites can watch the trades of investors who are doing well. This method mixes investing and social networking to help people who are just starting out make better choices.
• AI and data analytics will also be used by fintech companies to make trade algorithms and strategies that are more complex.
• Web 3.0, blockchain technology, and the decentralized finance (DeFi) space will change the way traditional finance works and make room for decentralized trading platforms and other advanced financial goods.
• Using virtual reality, trading apps will turn investments into games by adding virtual trading events, interactive features, and prizes.

Investors who want to diversify their holdings and take advantage of global growth chances will be drawn to fintech apps that give them access to international markets and emerging economies.

How can Appic Softwares help you make an app like Robinhood that lets you trade?

To sum it up, investing in trading app development has many benefits, ranging from more ways to make money to better company recognition. Having a well-made trading app can also be very helpful for your business and financial institutions. But you need to hire a reputable trading app creation company to do the work for you.

Appic Softwares can help you make a trade app by giving you advice, tools, and a planned way to make the app. We are a well-known fintech company that helps business owners create and release a trade app. Our design and programming team is highly skilled and can make interfaces that look good, add advanced features, and build strong backend infrastructure.

Our professionals know how to set up strong security steps to keep user data, financial transactions, and private data safe. Our team can also help you launch your games and offer support and maintenance services to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Get in touch with the Appic Softwares team of experts to build your trading app using the best tactics in the business.

FAQ

What do trading tools allow you to do?

People can buy, sell, and handle financial instruments with stock trading apps. Some of the things they can do are open accounts, handle portfolios, trade stocks, place orders, do market and fundamental analysis, buy fractional shares, trade on paper, make transactions, and a lot more.

How to keep your apps’ info safe when you trade?

Pick apps that you know you can trust, turn on two-factor authentication, keep your device safe, don’t log in from public Wi-Fi, use safe payment methods, and keep your personal information safe. Also, don’t give out any banking information over the phone or in public places without permission.

How long does it take to make an app for trading?

The building of a trading app should take between 3 and 6 months. But it could be different depending on the needs of the project, the technology stack, the length, the budget, the hiring of resources, and other factors. You can get in touch with the Appic Softwares team and tell them about your project. Once the delivery team knows what you need, they will give you an exact time frame.

How do I get Appic Softwares to make an app for trade for my business?

You can ask a question or get in touch with the Appic Softwares team through the website. Our team will get in touch with you to talk more. You can hire us to make a trade app after you go through a certain process.