Fintech Software Development Challenges and Solutions
The fintech business is rapidly evolving, and you must remain on top of these developments. Because the fintech industry is so competitive, you must be able to take all of the essential steps toward developing something practical with your team members before they are ever employed.
Developing software for the finance business presents several obstacles. These obstacles, ranging from regulatory compliance to security, may make or break your product and lead you to success (or failure). Let’s go through these topics in depth so you can identify the most critical software development concerns and better understand how to tackle them.
What are the most difficult hurdles in developing fintech software?
Regulatory compliance for fintech software
Regulation compliance is a big concern for the financial business. When creating and installing a financial software system, several different regulatory authorities must be considered, depending on the organisation’s geographical location.
To prevent significant repercussions, the technology employed, the company plan, the software, and many other factors must comply with government rules.
The challenge stems from the fact that rules are susceptible to change, making it difficult for businesses to stay up. Regtech solutions, on the other hand, can assist banks in monitoring transactions and detecting fraudulent behavior. Regtech will always be essential in the financial business since criminals continually devise new methods to circumvent the law.
What should you do?
Hiring a legal professional to walk you through the regulatory requirements and intricacies may be a wise option. They should regularly monitor and keep current on the newest regulatory rules for you to execute any necessary modifications as soon as feasible.
Providing superior data security
The most difficult challenge for financial software developers is developing both user-friendly and safe solutions. While traditional banks safeguard significant assets behind bulletproof walls, the security of digital economic goods is becoming increasingly difficult..
Because financial data is susceptible, a little coding flaw might have severe effects because financial companies frequently store massive volumes of consumer data.
If a fintech firm does not have proper data security safeguards, it may be vulnerable to hackers stealing consumer data. This might harm the company’s reputation and result in massive financial losses.
What should you do?
The following technologies may help secure your financial product:
- Two-factor authentication
- Biometric authentication
- Data encryption
- Notifications in real time
Furthermore, the procedures that aid in protecting sensitive information are described below.
Extensive documentation
Well-documented software alterations are critical for rapidly detecting a breach if one happens.
Regular updates
The regular software and third-party library upgrades and ensuring that users have the most recent versions.
Extensive testing
Frequent security testing is the best technique to identify the most sensitive components.
High price
The high cost of developing fintech software might be a barrier to entry for new enterprises. Many reasons contribute to this expense, including the requirement for specialized skills and expertise, costly technology and software, and a high level of security.
How should the high cost of fintech development be addressed?
There are numerous approaches to overcoming the high cost of developing financial software:
- collaborate with a trustworthy and experienced business that can give the required skills and resources.
- Use open-source solutions whenever feasible to save money.
- Build on top of a SaaS financial platform, which is available for a low monthly charge and eliminates the need for infrastructure maintenance.
The long era of development
Fintech software development may be time-consuming and take months or even years to accomplish. This can be difficult for fintech firms that must swiftly respond to changing market conditions or are under pressure to introduce new goods and services.
The amount of time it takes to build fintech software can have several effects, including increased costs, delays in releasing new goods and services, and consumer aggravation while waiting for updates. Furthermore, it allows competitors to overtake and win the target audience.
How do you deal with an extended software development cycle in fintech?
There are a few solutions to the challenges caused by protracted development terms:
- using agile methods
- outsource development effort
- invest in ready-made solutions
Unnecessary modesty aside, SDK.finance provides a software platform for creating financial products on top (remittance applications, payment processor solutions, neobanks, digital wallets, etc.) that can expedite time-to-market and save at least one year of active development.
Inadequate technical knowledge
The financial business is quickly expanding, but software developers need more technical competence. This may be a significant issue for companies attempting to stay up with the newest trends and technology.
This lack of technical understanding can result in missed opportunities, development delays, and increased expenditures. It can also make attracting and retaining top employees challenging for businesses.
What should you do?
Companies must engage in training and development programs to guarantee that their software engineers have the skills necessary to stay ahead of the curve. They must also provide competitive pay and compensation packages to recruit and retain great people.
Putting together the ideal fintech stack
With technology advancing at such a rapid pace, choosing the right fintech stack, i.e., servers, tools, programming languages, technologies, frameworks, databases, and so on, is critical to ensuring that the product built will not become obsolete before its release and will remain relevant for a long time and capable of achieving its goals.
What should you do?
Singling out a specific language won’t assist in this post because its selection is primarily up to the developers, who assess the business goals and the firm size and maturity before selecting the fintech stack for the project.
Whether Ruby, Java, Python, or C++ is chosen as the programming language will be highly influenced by the business needs, the customers’ operating systems, backends, the type of applications required, and so on.
Creating apps that are integration-ready
A future-ready finance solution must have free-flow communication and easy integrations. They pave the path for continual innovation and make upgrades easier.
API-first or API-driven development allows for a simple connection between internal systems and applications and integration with external third-party service providers.
What should you do?
API-driven development necessitates using API-first software architecture, which entails developing the APIs and constructing the rest of the application around them.
As a result, for organizations contemplating the creation of a new product, using an API-first strategy will assist in overcoming this difficulty.
Alternatively, you might use a pre-built API-driven finance software platform like SDK.
Finance, on which to create a payment or banking product, provides a set of open APIs ready to integrate with the essential services and providers to enable the app’s smooth functioning.
Creating cloud architecture
FinTech software development solutions powered by cloud architecture are essential for developing next-generation financial services offerings. Multi-platform support is critical for finance apps to eliminate infrastructure complications. Cloud-ready fintech products enable using SaaS-based models and public or private cloud platforms to decrease infrastructure expenses and maintenance issues.
Furthermore, cloud-ready fintech apps are scalable and adaptable, guaranteeing that financial institutions can innovate at scale while remaining ahead of the competition.
Cloud-based fintech solutions, on the other hand, may breach data management legal standards (some countries restrict keeping sensitive data on cloud servers outside their region), limiting fintech organizations’ infrastructure alternatives.
How can this be resolved?
In most circumstances, using hybrid cloud solutions rather than cloud solutions overcomes the regulatory compliance issue.
This paradigm links private and public cloud components and on-premises computing. By depending on a third-party provider for IT resources such as apps or storage and employing a private cloud for sensitive data storage or essential applications, this technique helps to cut infrastructure expenses. By delegating the SDK, this technique enables startups and SMBs to overcome the high infrastructure expenses barrier and access the market on a lower budget. Finance uses the hybrid cloud approach to give its SaaS version customers the ability to use its subscription-based fintech platform for their financial service products without making significant upfront investments, allowing them to try it for free during the three-month trial period and then benefit from the cost-effective hybrid-cloud delivery model for their growing businesses.
The back end API-driven software, in particular, is provided through the AWS marketplace, although clients’ primary databases are hosted and maintained in-house.
How can the efficiency of financial software development be increased?
- Define the project’s scope and develop a road map.
- Put together a team of professionals that are up to date on the newest technology and trends.
- Create a prototype or MVP (minimal viable product) to test the concept with potential customers.
- Create a thorough development strategy and time frame based on user input.
- Create the program utilizing the most recent technology and techniques.
- Thoroughly test the program before deploying it to production.
- Install the app on a secure and scalable platform like AWS (Amazon Web Services).
- Constantly monitor user input and make changes/updates as needed.
Fintech applications are popular, but creating one is a complex undertaking. Knowing the most significant financial software development difficulties, you may face when designing a fintech app will allow you to avoid or successfully manage them.