Investment App Development – Guide From Experts

Today, in this revolutionizing world, people prefer tapping their smartphones and getting the task done faster and easily, be it online food ordering, medicine purchasing, or anything. 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. 

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. 

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. 

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 per the user’s risk tolerance, age, income, and more. The best part about his investing and financial app is its business model that performs on autopilot. Every time when users order something, Acorns send the modification to their investing account. 

3. TD Ameritrade

USP: Available on all platforms and handheld devices.

With TD Ameritrade mobile app, you can access every essential you want 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. 

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.

How to Develop a Mobile Investment App?

With the increasing expectations and demand of users, a robust financial app has become a must-have. To stay competitive, relevant, or better in the long race ahead, a user-friendly and functional app needs to follow a well-structured approach. 

Below Are Steps You Should Follow for Financial Software 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. 

Must-Have Features of Investment Apps

1. Registration & Onboarding

Your app should offer users easy registration with their email address, phone number, or using other modes. Also, to make sure the users are real, the app should demand document verification. 

After the user registration, take them on your app tour, showing them the top features and the financial pipeline. 

2. Investor Portfolio

Users should be able to handle, change, and edit their investment portfolio on your app. They should be allowed to review their financial assets, see their asset stats, and expand their portfolios. 

3. Real-time Analytics and Statistics

Showcase the latest information about the market conditions in your mobile app. You can present asset performance data, permit users to track their earnings, and more. You can choose graphs and charts to exhibit analytics and stats. 

4. Personal Profiles

A personal profile may include details of a user, their portfolio, and their selected payment portfolio. 

5. Withdrawal Functionality

Allow your users to cash out their investments whenever they want to their bank accounts per the trading rules. For that, you need to integrate your app with a bank account. 

6. Online Transactions

A secure payment system should be integrated with your app to attain safe transactions. Braintree, PayPal, Stripe, and more payment gateways are best for this. 

7. Investment Option Rankings

Any investing apps need to provide users with some guidance in the face of rankings or analytics. You can reveal successful investment options that have uncovered growth lately or a few months before to ease investors to make an informed decision. 

8. Stock Search & Sorting

Permit your users to search stocks using your app’s sorting and filtering option. Also, prefer dividing assets into varied categories for fast navigation. A predictive search would be best to offer a better user experience. 

9. Investment portfolio tracking

It includes individual investment portfolio tracking.

10. Educational Resources

Informative videos, articles, and interactive tools will help users understand more about investing. 

11. Security Features

Investing apps need to prioritize security aspects to protect the financial information and assets of users. These features can be secure login, fraud detection tools, and encrypted data transfer. 

12. Investment Recommendations

Various financial software offers investment recommendations or even personalized investment portfolios relying on one’s risk tolerance and investment objectives. It may help users to make an informed decision when it comes to investment and diversifying their portfolio. 

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. 

Technology Stack for Investment App Development

How To Choose A Tech Stack For Developing A Mobile App

What is a Mobile Investment App Development Cost?

The cost to develop an investment app may start from $70,000 and goes beyond depending on the functionalities and features you want to include in your app. 

While making your app budget, you should consider all the factors that may affect the cost, like the complexity of apps, features, and more. 

You can start with the basic features, and after some time, you can add advanced ones. 

How Emizentech Can Help You

Emizentech is a software development company holding the required expertise in varied industry verticals, like Fintech, Retail, Health Care, Blockchain, and more. 

We have accomplished varied investment app development projects that are running successfully in the market. We can let you know the can-be-shared and necessary details, as the projects are under NDA. 

Review our portfolio, and we can bet after going through it, you would love to connect with our professionals to convert your ideas into reality. 

Conclusion

Developing a investment app may seem easy but quite tricky to complete. You should consider every necessary aspect, feature, tech stack, functionality, and more to let your app stay ahead of the curve. 

To make your app successful and catch up with the expected ROI, you should hire an Investment app development company holding the required skills and expertise to complete your project. 

Feel free to comment below if you have something new and innovative about investment app development and share it with the world.