Today, in this revolutionizing world, people prefer tapping their smartphones to get tasks done faster and more easily, be it online food ordering, medicine purchasing, or anything else. Investment management is also not left untouched.
People use secure investing apps to track their investments, make a budget, and invest in bonds, stocks, and other securities. Some popular options in this segment are Robinhood, Acorns, and Mint.
Investing app development demands expertise and a complete understanding of financial technologies and the market.
By Reading This Post, You Are Going to Educate Yourself on The Following:
- Why should you develop an investment application?
- Giants are growing in this segment.
- Types of investment platforms and which app should you develop?
- Steps to develop a mobile investment app
- Features to include in your app
- How to monetize your app
- Technology stack to consider
- Cost of an investment app development, etc.
Let’s elaborate on these points and learn almost every aspect of developing a mobile investment app.
What Is Investment App Development?
Investment app development is building a mobile app that allows users to buy, sell, or manage their investments. These apps can be simple platforms for buying stocks and ETFs or advanced ones that sell complex tools to professional traders.
Key Functionalities of Investment Apps
- Account Management
- Market Research & Analysis
- Security Features
- Investment Options
- Trading Functionality
- Portfolio Management
Online Investment Market Insights – Latest Facts and Figures
- Investing app searches have increased to around 115% year over year.
- In 2026, the global online trading market will likely increase at a worldwide CAGR of around 6.4% annually to hit about $13.3 billion.
- As recorded in 2022, the stock trade app market is likely to hit $13.6 billion, with a target to reach $89.8 billion by 2032.
- In 2032, the market size is expected to be 20.8%.
- Per the Bankrate survey, about 55% of Americans are using at least one banking app; 40%, 70%, and 17% of these have a peer-to-peer payment app, a stand-alone budgeting app, and a stand-alone investing app, respectively, installed in their mobile.
Benefits Of Developing An Investing App
An investing app is beneficial for users as well as enthusiasts looking to build an app.
Benefits for Users:
1. Convenience and Flexibility
An investment app allows users to invest flexibly and conveniently and buy and sell securities 24/7 from anywhere with an internet connection.
2. Increased Accessibility
An investment app makes investing more accessible to a broader audience, eliminating the need to connect with traditional brokerage companies. Users can start investing small amounts and manage themselves.
3. Lower Costs
Investment apps charge lower fees compared to traditional brokers. New investors or users with smaller portfolios may find it captivating.
4. Improved User Experience
Investment apps are crafted with an intuitive and user-friendly interface that even newbies may find easy to invest in. They can offer investment recommendations, educational resources, and portfolio management tools.
5. Fractional Shares
Some investing apps allow users to invest in fractional shares of costly stocks, streamlining their portfolio diversification and market participation.
Benefits for App Owners:
1. Innovation and Technology Adoption
Investment app development lets the app owners stay ahead of the curve and adopt technical evolution to ease users’ investment process.
2. Considerable Market Potential
The investment app landscape is expanding, powered by surging smartphone penetration and arousing interest in personal investment.
3. Brand Recognition and User Engagement
A successfully running investment app can create a robust brand reputation and drive a loyal customer base, leading to potential cross-selling options and long-term engagement.
4. Recurring Revenue Streams
Investment apps offer numerous monetization models, including subscription plans, commission fees, and freemium models, with some free and premium features.
5. Data Analytics and User Insights
Investment mobile apps can gather valuable data on user investment preferences and behavior. You can use this data to enhance your app’s features, build targeted marketing strategies, and personalize user experience.
Knowing the benefits of investment apps, you might have understood how profitable investment app development is. Connect with a mobile app development company with years of experience to get assistance from scratch to a successfully running investing app.
Top Investment Startups with Surprizing Investment Rounds Are Giants Now!
Let’s peep into some well-performing investing apps to know about their mistakes and unique factors that may help you in your development project venture.
1. Robinhood
USP: Commission-free trading.
Widely recognized as a safety-first company, Robinhood targets making their customer happy by meeting their financial requirements. It lets its users invest per their terms and at their pace. It offers varied investment products, like Invest, Retirement, Crypto, Cash Card, and more.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Intuitive and simple trading experience | No transparency |
| Fractional sharing trading | Limited educational and research content |
| Direct cryptocurrency access | Limited account types and investment offers |
| Robust cash management features | |
| Recurring investment functionality |
2. Acorns
USP: Make customers accustomed to routine investments, targeting long-term savings.
One of the leading financial apps, Acorns, permits customers to easily invest, save, and learn financial aspects. It provides custom portfolio management based on the user’s risk tolerance, age, income, and more. The best part about his investing and financial app is its business model, which performs on autopilot. Whenever users order something, Acorns sends the modification to their investing account.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Automatic investing process | Expensive management fees |
| Provide educational content | Limited portfolio choices |
| Best for beginners | Missing features |
| Offer extra perks | Charges for every ETF transfer |
3. TD Ameritrade
USP: Available on all platforms and handheld devices.
With the TD Ameritrade mobile app, you can access every essential you need to handle your accounts from your place. Besides, you can get a precise view of both your personal portfolio and market performance with this easy-to-use and simple app on your tablet, phone, or Apple Watch. It also lets users view real-time quotes, search for integrated charts with set-up price alerts and indicators, and access the watch lists to stay updated on their investments.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Free market research | High commissions options |
| Better customer support | High margin rates |
| Traditional mutual funds and stocks |
Which Types of Investment App Do You Want to Develop?
1. Stock Trading App
This type of investment app is crafted to ease stock trading. They are intuitively developed to make sure that stock market investment can be made irrespective of time and location.
Examples: TD Ameritrade, SoFi, Robinhood.
If you are planning to develop a stock market app, you may go ahead to catch up with the pace.
2. Bank Investment App
Such apps allow users to invest and conduct some particular business operations at any time from any location. Usually, financial institutions hold bank investment apps.
With such banking applications, users can make investments and open their IRA accounts easily. Besides, using such apps, users can check their bank account balances and financial transactions, take loans, save money, and do other banking activities.
Examples: Chime, Chase Mobile, and more.
3. Standalone Investment Apps
These apps focus on providing varied investment opportunities to a target audience. Such apps are segregated into varied types:
a) Human Advisor
The most important point of this online investment platform is the technology used to link a financial advisor team with users who are looking for investment advice virtually.
Such apps can be a hybrid or standalone investment advisory with this functionality.
b) Hybrid Advising
A hybrid app connects the chief functionality of Robo-advising and DIY investment platforms.
The app drives users to online investment platforms to make specific decisions by making suggestions aligning with AI-predicted trends.
c) Do It Yourself (DIY)
Such an investment product is built intuitively for professionals and laymen.
Most often, these products hold two interfaces: one holding basic functions for laymen and the other holding advanced features for professionals.
d) Robo Advisor
Such a financial app is developed to assist users in making smart investment decisions and meeting their financial objectives.
The Robo-advisor app uses AI, big data analysis, a news feed, and an algorithm to predict upcoming market trends.
4. All-in-One Investment Super App
Such apps meet varied investment and financial requirements, like money management, best investment options, budgeting, stock trading, mutual fund investment, personal Investment management, portfolio management, retirement planning, and a lot more under one roof. This type of app development service will target varied users with diverse needs offering distinct financial solutions via just a single app.
Must-Have Features To Consider For Investment App Development
An investing app should cater to user requirements and offer a convenient, informative, and secure platform for investment management.
We have created a table marketing essential features and functionalities of investment apps.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| User Accounts & Security | Secure process for user registration, login, and profile management. |
| Two-factor Authentication (2FA) | Offer an add-on security layer for logins and transactions. |
| Account Linking & Funding | Secure and seamless integration with bank accounts for streamlined deposits and withdrawals. |
| Investment Options | Allow users to buy and sell different financial options (stocks, bonds, ETFs, mutual funds). |
| Real-Time Market Data & Charts | Easy access to up-to-date market indices, stock prices, and interactive charts for deep analysis. |
| News & Research Tools | Smooth integration with analyst ratings, financial news feeds, and company reports. |
| Order Management | Ability to place buy and sell orders, monitor order status, and set price alerts. |
| Portfolio Management | Combined view of all user holdings, including transaction history, current performance, and account balances. |
| Performance Tracking & Analytics | Tools to analyze asset allocation, track portfolio performance over time, and address potential risks and opportunities. |
| Watchlists & Alerts | Allow the creation of personalized watchlists of particular stocks or securities and set price alerts for preferred entry or exit points. |
| User Interface (UI) & User Experience (UX) | Intuitive and user-friendly interface with straightforward navigation and effortless access to functionalities. |
Additional Features (Based on App Focus)
- Educational Resources: The app offers financial literacy tutorials, tools, and investment guides for newbies.
- Social Feature: Allow connecting with community forms to watchlist and share investment ideas.
- Fractional Shares: Permit users to invest in sections of costly stocks, increasing investment opportunities.
- Robo-Advisor Integration: Seamless integration with automated investment advice depending on user risk tolerance and profiles.
- Tax Optimization Tools: Tools to assist users in predicting and reducing their investment-relevant taxes.
By incorporating the features mentioned above and consistently innovating per the user requirements, investment apps can empower individuals to regulate their financial goals and participate in the investment world.
How To Develop A Mobile Investment App?
With users’ increasing expectations and demands, a robust financial app has become a must-have. A user-friendly and functional app needs to follow a well-structured approach to stay competitive, relevant, or better in the long race ahead.
Below Are the Steps You Should Follow for Investment App Development:
1. Conduct Deep Market Research
Before developing any web or mobile solution, one needs to conduct a deep market to identify the potential competitors, key trends they follow, potential users, and their preferences and needs.
You Can Follow the Below Steps to Emerge with Something Useful:
1. Define your target audience, gender, age, investment experience, and income level. This will assist you in customizing your research to surface the requirements and choices of your target market.
2. To identify the market opportunities and understand the latest trends, you can research the investing areas and consider them while developing your fintech software development to make it appear uniquely in the market.
3. Study your potential competitors, investing software, platforms, and apps in the market, and understand their pricing strategy, features, and marketing tactics.
4. Reach your potential investing app, conduct scrutiny, and interview them to accumulate customer feedback, including features and functionalities they look for in apps.
5. Keep your eyes on the latest updates and news of the investing industry to match the steps of advanced trends and development that may impact your app.
6. Deep market research will help you attain valuable insights that you can consider to build a successful financial management app.
2. Comply with Regulations
You should comply with various regulatory requirements depending on the investing app you are developing and the market in which it’s going to be operable.
You may review the below key regulatory considerations that you need to keep track of
3. Investment Adviser Regulations
If your app offers investment advice or makes recommendations for investments to users, you should consider an investment adviser along with investment adviser regulations.
4. Anti-money Laundering Regulations
If your investment app permits money transferring or making investments, you may consider anti-money laundering regulations that may include detection and reporting suspicious activity.
5. Consumer Protection Regulations
Data privacy and financial disclosures are some consumer protection regulations that you should track while developing your app. It may include the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), etc.
6. Hire App Development Team
While hiring a financial app development company or a team of experts to complete your project, you should think about a few key aspects:
- Be sure that the developers you hire are experts in financial technology.
- They should hold the required development skills
- Conduct effective communication and collaborate with the app development team
- Follow the agile development process
- Adapt to modifications in requirements and scope as needed.
7. List Out Necessary Features
You should categorize your app feature list into two; MVP and advanced.
You can start with the basic and most important features that may meet the user’s essential requirements.
Later on, when you find your app running as expected and hitting the right ROI, you can introduce more advanced features.
8. Craft an Engaging UX/UI Design
Developing an investment app with the required features is not enough to increase traffic to your app. To engage users in your app, you should use an appealing UI. For your investment in app development, you should hire UX/UI design services to craft the needed screens for your apps on different OS.
9. Go With the Right Tech Stack
The technologies you pick for your financial software app development will ensure the scalability and stability of your app development project. To enhance your app ahead in your venture, you should choose the right technologies and architecture beforehand for your app.
The tech stack relies on your project requirements. You should consult with a fintech software development company and pick the apt tech stack.
10. Develop Your Investment App
Time to jump onto your investment app development phase.
One of the lengthy stages is app development. You can divide it into various parts, known as sprints, to make the app development process more structured. Every sprint would take at least two weeks to develop.
While this process is going on, app developers generally implement the needed part of your app functionality. The QAs test your financial apps to locate the bugs.
11. Release Your Product
The final step of investment app development is rolling out your project. In this step, you need to launch your investing app on Google Play or the App Store.
The app development team helps you to release your app.
How Much Does It Cost To Build An Investment App?
The cost to develop an investment app may start at $20,000- $250,000 and can go beyond, depending on the functionalities and features you want to include.
When making your app budget, you should consider all the factors that may affect the cost, such as the complexity of apps and their features.
You can start with the basic features, and after some time, you can add advanced ones.
Tools And Tech Stack Required For Investment App Development
As you now know the features, functionalities, benefits, and almost everything about an investment app, it’s time to choose a suitable tech stack to build an investment app that can perform as anticipated.
We have curated a table that includes the required tools and technologies you can use to build an app.
| Category | Tools/Technologies |
| Front-End Development | Swift (for iOS) or Kotlin (for Android), React Native (or similar), UI/UX Design Tools (like Figma, Sketch), JavaScript, HTML & CSS |
| Back-End Development | Node.js (or similar), Python (or similar), Databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL), APIs (e.g., Financial data APIs, Market data feeds) |
| Security & Compliance | Encryption Technologies, Authentication Tools, Regulatory Compliance Tools |
| Development Tools | Version Control System (e.g., Git), Development Environment (e.g., Xcode, Android Studio), Testing Frameworks |
This table shows the general tech stack businesses usually choose when building an investment app. You first go through your project requirements and factors that impact the choice of a tech stack.
Required Team For Successful Development Of Investment App
You need a team with multiple skill sets in different areas to develop an investing app.
We have mentioned the essential roles you need in your team:
1. Project Manager
The member supervises the complete development process and manages resource allocation, deadlines, and budget. They take care of clear communication and collaboration within the team, track the project’s progress, and address potential issues to maintain efficiency.
2. Business Analyst
Research the market and point the user needs to define the target audience and the app’s functionalities. The member creates technical specifications as part of UI/UX design processes to ensure the application fulfills user needs.
3. Mobile App Developers
Being experts in specific programming languages, developers build the app’s core functionalities. He creates a front-end interface and back-end logic for a smooth app experience. A developer is also responsible for integrating APIs for market feeds, payment gateways, and financial data.
4. Back-End Developers
They are best at building server-side functionalities leveraging technologies such as Python or Node.js to manage data processing, security measures, and user account management. They ensure perfect data storage and retrieval from databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL.
5. Security Engineer
The team members implement strong security measures to safeguard user data, transactions, and financial details. Also, they ensure compliance with applicable data privacy laws and financial regulations. The security engineer conducts security testing to point out vulnerabilities.
6. UI/UX Designer
The designers craft the app’s UI, aiming for intuitive navigation and usability. They create prototypes and mockups to accumulate user feedback and iterate on the design depending on user needs. The designers ensure a user-friendly and consistent experience across every platform.
7. QA Testers
They conduct rigorous testing throughout the app development process to address and fix bugs and glitches. They aim to test app performance, functionality, compatibility, and security across different operating systems and devices. Testers ensure your app can provide an error-free and seamless experience.
The complexity of the investment app you want to develop decides the team size. You can hire a mobile app development company with proven expertise in fintech app development.
How To Monetize An Investment App?
The chief and end objective of any app is usually to make it profitable, which may attain the expected ROI.
For that, it’s essential to incorporate the best monetization strategies when you start with planning.
You may choose from varied ways to make money for your app.
| Monetization Strategies | |
|---|---|
| Subscription Fee | Your investing app may offer an option to create an account for free. You may charge a subscription fee for helping users with varied trading options. |
| In-app Purchases | When the users become familiar with your app interface, you can attract them with improved features and better regulation of their investment decisions on a chargeable basis. |
| Advertisements | Allow your partner brands to run their advertisements on your app that you may charge while letting the users enjoy your app for free. |
How Can EmizenTech Help in Investing App Development?
Hiring a team of developers to build your investing app can help you have control over the development process. You can set the tasks, manage the timeframe and budget, and know their work quality. Also, you can save your time and money and invest in other valuable tasks for a successful business run.
Here, you can hire EmizenTech, a leading app development company that has a proven track record and engaging portfolio in developing fintech apps. The company’s team of experts has a complete understanding of app development and can prioritize innovative solutions customized to your specific needs.
Key Highlights of Partnering with EmizenTech for Investing App Development
- Professional App Developers
- Comprehensive Understanding
- Years of Experience
- Custom App Development Services
- Competitive Pricing
- Faster Time to Market
- Engaging Portfolio
- Proven Track Record
- Worldwide Clientele
Conclusion
Developing an investment app may seem easy, but it is quite tricky. You should consider every necessary aspect, feature, tech stack, functionality, and more to ensure that your app stays ahead of the curve.
To make your app successful and catch up with the expected ROI, you should hire an investment app development company with the required skills and expertise to complete your project.
Feel free to contact us if you have something new and innovative about investment app development and share it with the world.
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