How to Build a Personal Finance App in 2023: trends, examples, recommendations that will help you succeed

Managing finances is always a challenging task, no matter what kind of finances we’re talking about - business or personal. However, when we refer to various tools for financial management, most often we mean software for business. As for now, this tendency is changing rapidly as personal finance apps enter the market. People love to make their personal life smart and convenient using up-to-date banking technologies. So these apps are a great way to help users get a better grasp on their money.

Therefore, if you’re thinking of fintech software development, personal finance app creation is a great idea. In the article below, you’ll find the most important info, trends, examples, and recommendations on how to build a personal finance app.

So without further ado, let’s move straight to the topic!

Personal Finance App Development Market Overview

According to the latest researches, the personal finance market size is expected to grow and reach more than $1,5 million by 2027. These figures confirm that such applications are really in demand in the market and meet the needs of consumers. Nowadays, there are several types of personal finance apps represented on the market:

• smart spending trackers
• apps for smart savings
• lending apps
• apps for smart investments
• apps that contain all the above-mentioned financial management directions.

What people love about personal finance apps is the ability to:

• take control over their funds
• track expenses and make them smarter
• outline their budget and adjust their financial behavior to match it
• plan investments
• get reasonable recommendations on how to improve their financial condition
• get financial reports
• increase financial literacy

To stay competitive, your personal finance app should not just cover all the above-mentioned issues but exceed users’ expectations, catch up on new trends quickly or even be innovative enough to set your own trends.

Top 3 Personal Finance App Development Trends

Gamification

Financial management is always about the abundance of numbers, tables, and statistical information that is difficult to perceive at once. From this standpoint, we completely agree that it’s quite hard to make your financial app fun and engaging. Still, there’s a great way out - you can think of adding gamification to your personal finance app! In simple terms, by gamification we mean the usage of various game mechanics or elements in non-game software to make it more catchy, attract more users and stimulate them to interact with your app as many times as possible. For example, you can create an achievement system and provide your users with bonuses when a particular financial task is completed (e.g. the user reached the desired amount of smart savings, managed to cut expenditures on a particular category of products, and so on).

AI-based analysis & communication

To stand out from the competition and build meaningful software, add to your app advanced technologies like AI. AI enables your app to analyze huge data amounts, users’ financial behavior and habits fast and effectively. Based on the analytical deliverables, AI can provide your users with important financial insights, predictions, and tips on how their financial condition can be enhanced. Moreover, AI can strengthen your app security (e.g. biometric authentication), make the interaction with your app more human-like (AI voice assistant), etc.

Receipt recognition

It’s another feature that will make the users love your app. As for today, it’s used in all personal finance applications and is only gaining popularity, so it’s your great chance to follow the hot trend! With the special optical character recognition (OCR) technology, your app can detect various texts, extract the needed information from receipt and forward it to the app. This will help to process data faster, omit manual errors, and gather more info to build a more detailed financial picture.

And now let’s take a closer look at those trend-followers and trend-setters that are the most popular in the personal finance market in 2022 and are very likely to preserve their positions in 2023.

Top 3 personal finance software examples to learn from

Mint

• Number of users: over 20 million
• Launched in 2006

Mint is probably the most popular personal financial assistant app worldwide. It is recognized as one of the Best Budgeting Apps by Forbes Advisor. Mint is popular among users because it's a one-in-all app. Within this app you can cover all your personal budgeting needs: sync your bank accounts, track your spendings and income, plan your budget, set financial goals, etc.

YNAB (You Need A Budget)

• Number of users: no precise info
• Launched in 2004

YNAB has a big loyal audience thanks to its outstanding proactive approach to the creation of the personal budget. With their specific features and easy-to-use interface, they ensure maximum users' involvement in goal setting and budget improvement. Their main principles are “to give every dollar a job; to roll with punches; and to embrace your expenses”. They went much further than ordinary software - they created a whole financial philosophy.

Personal Capital

• Number of users: over 3 million
• Launched in 2009

Personal Capital is so loved by users because it’s not just an ordinary personal finance app. It also can be considered as a wealth management app and functions like a smart investment advisor. Thanks to built-in AI, Personal Capital turns out to be a great tool to assess financial risks, compare investment opportunities and define the best one for you.

Personal Finance App Development Stages

How to make a personal finance app? Like any other app, the personal finance app development process usually consists of several interrelated stages. Keep in mind that if you want to skip one of the stages and jump directly into software development because it looks like it can be much cheaper in the final result, it’s a very bad idea. Move step-by-step, starting from the most basic questions and tasks, and don’t hurry up - only this way you will end up with a high-quality product.

Briefly, the personal app development process looks like this:

• analysis of your target audience, competitors. market conditions, trends, evaluation of potential risks and growth opportunities, etc.
• creation of the project strategy, thorough planning of project resources (time, budget, needed experts, and so on)
• building of the project prototype that is the first and the most simple version of how your app will look and function like
• UI/UX design that is the key to great app-user interaction and high user involvement
• code creation that means that your idea transforms into something tangible with the help of technology
• thorough testing of your app to ensure that it has no bugs, functions smoothly and сan cope with high-traffic loads
• launching to the market.

Top 3 Personal Finance App Development Cost

Based on different resources, personal finance app development can cost you from $40,000 to $80,000. It’s almost impossible to provide precise numbers as the app development price depends on various factors, such as your team expertise and location, the complexity of the features you want to implement, UI/UX design specifics, usage of advanced technologies, and so on.

Here’re two secret hints that can help you cut app development costs:

Build MVP

Minimum Viable Product is a very basic version of your app that contains the crucial features only. However, it can be launched to the market, so you can test your idea, get the first users, attract investors and make money. This way you can continue your development process and get profit at the same time.

Hire an outsourcing development team

Sometimes it’s much cheaper to hire tech experts from other countries. Investigate the rates in your country and compare them with the Eastern European (for example) software developers’ rates.

Our Ukrainian software development company Perfsol has profound expertise in personal finance app creation. So if you need some recommendations regarding your project or are ready to start your development process right now, don’t hesitate to contact us!