Thanks to smartphones, modern consumers can now access their bank accounts anytime to view their balance and check their recent transactions. While this can be done on your bank’s website, six out of every ten mobile users prefer to use an app instead. As a result, we are seeing an increase in personal finance platforms like Mint that offer users a streamlined financial overview.
These apps are especially useful for people with multiple personal or credit accounts, as they provide users with a way to connect all their accounts under the same platform. This way, users can easily manage their accounts and keep track of their total cash flow in one place.
In this article, we’ll discuss the ins and outs of personal finance apps and walk you through the proper steps to take when building a Mint-like platform of your own. Keep reading to learn more.
What You’ll Learn In This Post
- What Is Mint?
- Fintech Mobile App Industry Overview
- Popular Features of Mint
- 4 Steps to Build a Personal Finance App like Mint
- How to Market Your Personal Finance App
- How to Monetize Your Personal Finance App
Table of Contents
What Is Mint?
Mint is a free personal finance app that allows users to sync all their financial accounts, including mortgages, credit cards, PayPal, and investments, for hassle-free money management.
With over 30 million users, Mint has achieved massive popularity due to its ample features like budget creation, bill reminders, and personalized insights on how to spend smarter and save more. The platform also monitors your credit health and provides a full explanation of the factors that are contributing to that score.
Fintech Mobile App Industry Overview
The international financial technology industry was valued at $110.57 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $698.48 billion by 2030. This rapid expansion is likely a result of COVID-19, which led to an increased demand for advanced technologies like online financing options.
In fact, according to a mobile app trends report by Adjust, fintech app installs grew by 35 percent between 2020 and 2021, with payment platforms making up the majority of these installs at 57 percent, followed by banking at 34 percent.
These statistics show that the fintech app industry is thriving and well poised for continued growth, especially regarding personal finance apps like Mint.
Step-By-Step Guide to Build a Personal Finance App Like Mint
Now that you understand the necessary features of a personal finance app, you can start the fun part: building a Mint-like app of your own. However, you will need to follow these four steps in order to ensure your platform achieves the same popularity and success.
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Define Your Audience and Requirements
The first step in building a personal finance app like Mint is determining your niche and target audience, thoroughly researching the demographic to better understand their preferences and behaviors. This will help you discover trends related to what your target audience is looking for, as well as the features and functions that will be required based on your anticipated users.
For example, if you plan to target older adults, you’ll likely want to include features aimed at planning for retirement and drawing Social Security. On the other hand, an app intended for younger individuals might focus on paying off student loans and saving for a new home.
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Design Your App
After determining your niche, you can now begin the process of designing your app with its required features. For this step, you’ll want to create a prototype of your app, paying close attention to your platform’s user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). Proper use of UI/UX principles will make sure your app is easy to navigate and runs smoothly. You’ll also want to remember not to overwhelm your users with the design; instead, be simple yet creative.
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Develop Your MVP
Once your app has been designed with all its required features, you can begin developing and actually coding your personal finance platform. This step will involve extensive knowledge, skills, and experience, so you may want to consider consulting an expert development agency for assistance. However, before hiring a development team, it’s important to first check their portfolio for relevant experience and verify that they offer post-support options.
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Deliver Your App
Now that you’ve designed and developed your personal finance app like Mint, you can deliver the platform to app stores. After its release, you will still need to consistently monitor the app for any bugs, quickly resolving any issues that arise. This step will continue for as long as the platform is available in app stores.
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How to Monetize Your Personal Finance App
Now that you’ve deployed your app, the next step is to determine a strategy of earning revenue from your personal finance platform. This can be done in many ways, including offering in-app purchases or a monthly subscription service.
In-App Purchases
One way to monetize your personal finance platform is by allowing users to pay a fee to access special items or advanced features. For example, you could limit the number of accounts that can be connected for free or even offer users the ability to receive personalized financial advice. This will ensure that users can pick and choose what upgrades are most important to them, which will likely boost the overall experience.
Monthly Subscriptions
You could also utilize the Software-as-a-Service model by providing users with the option of downloading a free app but paying a monthly fee to unlock premium features. Simplifi, another personal finance app, takes this strategy a step further by only allowing paid subscribers access to the platform.
Popular Features of Mint
As the most downloaded personal finance app on the market, Mint offers users a variety of valuable tools and features, including the ability to create a budget, set financial goals, track bills, and access personal spending data.
Budgeting
After syncing your accounts, Mint will automatically categorize your transactions and give you a proposed budget based on your current finances. This budget can be edited, or you can create your own budget altogether. Users also have the option of making a budget for each specific category, like gas or groceries. Ultimately, this feature provides a way to see exactly where your money is going, so you can efficiently analyze your spending habits.
Financial Goal Tracking
Mint users can also set up various short- and long-term savings goals, such as reducing credit card debt, taking a trip, or purchasing a new car. With this feature, you can determine a target date to reach that goal and specify the amount of money that will go toward that goal each month. If you don’t know how much money you will actually need, the platform will calculate it for you. For example, if you’re saving to buy a new vehicle, Mint will estimate the price based on that specific car’s Kelley Blue Book value.
Bill Tracking
Mint’s bill tracking feature lets users view all their upcoming bill payments directly in the app. This means that you don’t have to log into multiple different sites to view and pay bills. Users can also set reminders to pay bills and even receive warnings when their account balance has dipped too low to make a payment.
Reports and Data
With Mint’s Trends feature, users can discover customizable line graphs and reports based on their spending data. In addition to spending, users can receive reports on their income, net income, assets, debt, and net worth. The reports can be viewed by the current month or a different period; they can also be filtered by the data category, tag, or merchant. This feature essentially allows users to visually track their finances over time.
How to Market Your Personal Finance App
After developing and deploying your app, you will need to explore different ways to get the word out about your personal finance app. While there are countless marketing strategies to utilize, we will discuss the most common ways to advertise a platform like Mint.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization – or SEO – refers to the process of maximizing the number of visitors to your website through various ranking factors that help your site appear higher on the search engine result page. By optimizing these factors, which include content quality, keywords, page speed, and backlinks, you can easily increase the visibility of your personal finance app when people search for similar products in search engines like Google. This is an incredibly effective marketing strategy, as the more visibility you achieve in search engines, the more likely you are to attract new app users.
Social Media Marketing
Promoting your personal finance app on other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, is another solid marketing strategy. This can be done by paying the platform to display your ads to your target audience or collaborating with social media influencers to showcase your app on their pages. You can also take a more organic route by creating and posting content on your own page and engaging with your existing user base.
PPC Ads
Pay-per-click advertising is another effective way to market your personal finance app. This will involve paying a fee to have your ads displayed on search engine results pages or in app stores in order to increase downloads. Fortunately, there are many tools available to help you get started with PPC marketing, like Google Ads, which provides a simplified process of promoting your app across the Google platform.
The Future of Personal Finance Apps
The future of personal finance apps is promising; however, to reach their full potential, these apps will need to strike a delicate balance between automation and human insight. While AI-powered tools like budget trackers and automated investing can offer convenience, user trust depends on integration with financial expertise. Hybrid solutions that combine data-driven functions with access to qualified advisors may resonate most with users going forward.
For example, robo-advisors can analyze spending habits to generate personalized investment plans, but algorithms alone often lack nuance for one’s unique financial life stages. As a result, allowing a certified financial planner to review computer-generated advice and provide modifications based on two-way conversations could lead to optimal strategies.
Consumer education also remains crucial, as no app can make multifaceted money decisions on its own. Resources to boost financial literacy, from classes to blogs to one-on-one advisors, will likely thrive alongside intelligent apps. An ideal system would leverage digital personalization while ensuring human wisdom guides users toward beneficial financial behaviors.
Mobile App Development from Idea Maker
Since 2016, Idea Maker has excelled in all areas of mobile app development, completing projects for a variety of industries, including health and beauty, agriculture, and social media. Our designers and developers are dedicated to offering a transparent process that ensures our clients are in control of their own ideas. So, what are you waiting for? Schedule a consultation with us today and take the first steps in bringing your personal finance app to life.
