The Top 7 Mobile Banking Trends That Will Upgrade Your App

Mobile banking is one of the fastest-growing industries, bringing new trends yearly. The COVID pandemic has helped mobile banking grow and brought even more patterns into the industry. Each year, making a competitive mobile banking app gets harder and harder. In 2020, about 1.9 billion people worldwide will use online banking.

By 2024, this number is awaited to reach 2.5 billion. The number of users increases, and the audience’s tastes become more demanding. In this case, you have no choice but to follow the trends in mobile banking. In this article, I’ll talk about the mobile payment trends that are changing the industry and that you can use to meet users’ needs.

 

What Is A Mobile Banking App?

Before we talk about trends in general, I think it’s important to get one thing straight: what do we call a mobile banking app? In my job, I’ve had to explain the difference between mobile banking apps and fintech apps, so it’s unclear. So, let’s look at the kinds of apps that fall under “mobile banking”:

• Payment systems help people do business online, like PayPal; Neobanking apps are self-sufficient mobile banking apps that help people manage their accounts, do transactions, pay bills, etc.
• Analytical economic apps also help you keep track of your finances, organize your spending by category, etc.
• Apps for investing in crypto or stocks (for example, Coinbase, Binance, Robinhood).

 

Top 7 Online Banking Trends for 2022

Now that we know the basics, let’s look at how mobile banking is changing.

User-Centered Design

It’s no secret that all services aimed at users have changed significantly in the last 15 years. The users are now more important than the quality of the service itself when it comes to these kinds of services.

To be a user’s favorite, you don’t have to do a service that is very tech-savvy and hard to use. You need to make a mobile banking app that is easy to use and lets people do their banking tasks quickly, easily, and even in a fun way.

You need to take a user-centered approach to make things simple and easy to use. This is very important when Generation Z and Millenials are your main audience. Take a look at the Chase app. It gives the user a customizable experience, such as the ability to change quick actions or alerts.

Open Banking API

Open banking is another trend that has changed the business world in the past few years. With this new technology, a bank can share its banking information with third parties (startups) through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). These APIs can build new fintech products, such as financial analytics apps.

Right now, open banking API is hitting the rails. This is because many countries, like the EU, India, and the US, are establishing rules for open API to make this process easier. Still, many countries haven’t yet changed their laws to allow open banking. Anyway, this trend toward mobile banking is likely to change the industry for many years to come.

The open banking API was used to make the Connected Money app a great example of a mobile banking app. The UK bank HSBC started Connected Money in May 2018. The app lets users see their bank accounts from different banks and take care of their loans, mortgages, and credit cards all in one place.

AI & Machine Learning

Can an article about trends be written without discussing AI and Machine Learning? I don’t think so. Both of these innovations are generally popular in the tech world, and online banking is no different. Both machine learnings make mobile banking more personalized and help customers have a better experience, which is very important, as we’ve already said.

For example, you might use AI on the front end to make chatbots, voice assistants, or client testimonials that act like real employees. A mobile bank that profited from using chatbots is Burbank, a neobank run by the Crédit Agricole group.

BforBank put together the chatbots, dynamic Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), forms, and interaction pages to handle the workload. Because of this, neobank customers can use the service any time of day or night, and the number of people using the app has grown to an average of 850,000 visits per month.

 

Big Data

Big Data is a technology that allows it to collect and process such personal information about users. Like AI and ML, this technology spreads quickly and is used in many different areas for marketing, sales, and improving the user experience. Being data-related, big data has a vague reputation. Big data is often mistakenly considered a security risk, especially in online mobile apps.

But would it surprise you if I told you that big data helps users stay safe and stop crimes? This is true, though. Even though a mobile banking app keeps track of what users do in the app, it may be able to tell right away if something strange happens. For example, if a large amount of money has been cashed or deposited, or if a user has done anything out of the ordinary.

 

No Code/Low Code Development

These are a gold mine for fintech startups that are just getting started. When you don’t have much time or money to work with, making the simplest version of a product is best. In other words, a product that is good enough to sell. No-code or low-code programs help you make the MVP of a product quickly and cheaply so you can get it on the market faster.

 

Personalization

Personalization is a less obvious trend in mobile banking, but it is not any less important. Today, making a mobile banking app that works well is not enough. Making an app for a specific group of people is also very important.

For example, one group might be made up of gamers. So the item might be a special neobank for gamers where users get cash back on all games-related purchases. A similar can be said for the human who likes sports or animals.

Gamification

The best way to keep users returning is to give them a good experience. When designed and used correctly, gamification tools make the user experience fun and easy. Gamification makes banking fun by adding games, wins, and rewards like getting a loan or putting money in an account. You can start adding game elements by giving out awards and badges for completing tasks.

BBVA, a top Spanish new bank, is a good example of gamification that works. The bank used a strategy that was based on games. This was done in a BBVA Game. The app shows you how to change banks, pay taxes, or get a loan, and it also has tutorials on how to do these things. Users get points when they finish the tasks, which they can then use to download music or watch movies.

 

Conclusion

A founder of a banking app needs to keep up with mobile banking trends. The truth is that you need more than business skills to make a great app today. You should also pay attention to what users say, understand their problems, and want to solve them.

You can’t know everything there is to know about every new trend in online banking. But you can always count on technical experts and development teams to make the right decisions and keep up with all the latest trends in mobile banking.