Building Scalable Fintech Applications: A Practical Guide for African Entrepreneurs
Tags: fintech, finance, softwareengineering
Published: 2023-06-19 17:18:44

Africa and Nigeria in particular are clearly in the midst of one of the most exciting phases of innovation and disruption in the financial sector.

Today, Fintech is emerging as a tech enabler in Nigeria,improving financial inclusion and serving as a catalyst for innovation in other sectors, such as agriculture and healthcare.

The increasing need for mobile money transfers and the underserving of small and medium enterprises in rural communities has created an opening that fintech startups have been quick to take advantage of.

No doubt, fintech startups are challenging traditional banking structures and are creating efficiency gains by opening up the financial services value chain.

This rise of fintech startups has put the demand for custom fintech applications on the rise as well. However, building a financial technology app is some real work.

I have had entrepreneurs who have discussed with me developing on fintech applications but are yet to do the groundwork in the early development phase.

**Below, I have highlighted these points that can serve as a practical guide to building a scalable fintech application.**

### Choose a specific area:
When you have come up with an idea for your proposed fintech solution, you need to find a particular area or niche you want to develop the application for. A niche constitutes a set of areas a fintech startup could focus on for example;

**Specific Demographics**: You could target specific portions of the populace, like young adults or pensioners. Specific Industry: You could also target specific industries, such as offering loans, insurance, and payments.

### Get your legal framework right:
There are several regulations put in place by the central bank for the operation of a financial service application. These regulations are very important because financial services are highly regulated.

Knowing the standards and regulations put in place by the Apex bank is crucial to developing a successful fintech product. Discovering new laws and rules while you’re already deep into the development process might cause major changes in the app’s features.

### Know the exact problem you are solving:
You need to ask these questions. What problem are you addressing with the app?. What unique solution the application is providing for users? And what features should it include? You need to have a clear vision of the final result you are trying to build.

When you have made good market research, your team will come up with a final idea of a business case that will be competitive and user-oriented.

### Choose the right technology:
To choose the right technology for your fintech application, you need to clearly define the features and functionalities that you will be integrated. The technology you choose should allow you to add new features quickly and make changes when necessary, without affecting the functionality of the entire application.

Your selected technology plays a major role in deciding the future of your application and choosing the wrong tech stack can cause you the loss of money, time, and resources for your project.

Firstly, you need to choose the right architecture. An application architecture determines how all the components will organize and communicate with each other.

After choosing the best architecture for your fintech app, you need to select a programming language. There are many programming languages to develop an application. The language of choice often dictates the cost and time needed for development.

For the mobile version of your application, you can choose between native app development (building separate apps for Android and IOS), or cross-platform development (writing a single codebase for both).

To minimize the time of your application development, you can consider using cross-platform technologies such as React Native or flutter. (Watch out for my next article on choosing the best technology for your fintech app).

### Keep it simple, make it user-friendly:
Fintech applications are meant to be user-friendly. That’s the reason they are designed for. Customers know nothing about the coding, what they praise is simplicity, transparency, and a nice user interface. 

Good UI/UX is the second most important thing talking about Fintech applications after security. Keep it simple by ensuring everything your user might need is available on the dashboard without tons of unnecessary features.

### Develop an MVP:
A minimum viable product aims at testing the application before launching it. It’s simply a basic version of the app that includes its fundamental components and features. 

That’s enough for the users to try it, and also a chance to attract new investors. Getting feedback from real users will show you if there are any weaknesses and also you’ll easily find out what features should be added next. #fintech #softwaredevelopment #Application