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How to build a personal finance app in 2022

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How to build a personal finance app in 2022

Personal finance apps, which can also be referred to as money management or budgeting apps, are:

  • Primarily mobile apps that connect and manage your bank cards.
  • Investments.
  • Credit cards.
  • All aspects of your personal finances in a single place.

It also records all your transactions (both income and expenditure and investments) and allows you to view them more simply.

Types of personal finance apps

  • As the name implies, a manual finance app is a type of app that will require you to personally input the figures and category of each income and expenditure.
  • The linked finance app automatically gets all the information regarding your expenses as it has already been linked to all your bank accounts and cards.

Keeping track of how and what you earn is not enough to be financially secure; you also need to know how and what you spend. People use personal finance apps for various reasons, and here are a few of them:

  1. Get prepared for any financial emergency.
  2. Save effectively and plan for the future.
  3. Take control and keep track of what you spend the most on.
  4. Tax duties are less complicated.
  5. Simplifies complicated financial management.

Creating a finance app is not as simple as it might look because it requires a great deal of work and research to create a perfect and unique one that will stand out and attract people's attention. The question is now, "How do you build a good finance app?"

Know Your Audience

The first and most important thing, you need to know your target audience. This will allow you to understand what they are expecting from a personal finance app and give you insight into the features to add and the ones you shouldn't.

You should also know that users are expecting their finance app to have certain key features, like:

  • Expense Tracking
  • Visualization
  • Payment Reminder
  • AI-assisted paying plan
  • Bank/credit card Integration
  • Robust security
  • Report and statistics

Visualization will help present finances so that users will easily understand. Payment reminders will allow them to reach their savings goal and so on.

Understand The Important Integration

The majority of personal finance apps tend to integrate or connect with financial institutions and some fintech apps, making it convenient for their users. Integrations are essential for finance apps because they aid in streamlining the process for your users, giving them an excellent experience and encouraging the adoption of your app.

Integrations are done with the aid of an API (Application Programming Interface), which acts as a pathway that allows different platforms to exchange data and interact. The API also helps speed the development of the finance sector as you won't need to create other integration functions from scratch.

Enforce Security

Like with every other app, security should be at the top of the priority list because this involves people's money and data, after all. Financial apps are at a higher risk of getting exploited by hackers. We don't need to look too far to realize that cyberattacks are on the rise daily.

Hackers can quickly get into the data streams without adequate and proper safeguards and steal some sensitive information.

Choosing The Suitable Tech Stack

After getting the rough sketch or idea of your personal finance app's features, security layers, and integrations, the next course of action is to figure out the right tools needed to bring them to life. This is called your "tech stack".

This starts with choosing your programming language, Python or Java. Python is mainly preferred and popular because it is fast, easy to learn, and straightforward. At the same time, Java is relatively slow and more memory-intensive than Python, though it has excellent security.

Creating an Exceptional UX Design

A unique user experience (UX) is needed for every personal finance app to succeed. Keep in mind that you are attempting to simplify financial management for your users; thus, the look and structure of your app must reflect this.

Conclusion

After testing your finance app thoroughly to detect and get rid of bugs, it is time to consider launching it. Remember that there is more to launching an app than publishing it on the Apple or Google Play Store. Creating a personal finance app might be simple, but it is never easy.

Walter Guevara is a software engineer, startup founder and currently teaches programming for a coding bootcamp. He is currently building things that don't yet exist.

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