Traditional banks are well known for their lengthy queues and neverending bureaucracy. Unlike these banks, online mobile banking allows customers to open new accounts, perform transactions, and do many other banking actions online, within seconds.
The annual growth rate of the global mobile app payment market between 2021 and 2026 is 23.8 percent. This will see a huge increase from the $1.434 Trillion in 2020.
That’s why the development of online banking apps like Revolut have gained momentum recently. Launched in 2015, Revolut grew to 350,000 active daily users in only three years. This person-to-person platform is now valued at $5.5 billion.
So, the development of a money transfer app can be very beneficial and profitable. In this article, we will show you how to build a successful money transfer app.
Step-by-Step Guide on Building Money Transfer App
Now, let’s talk about the steps required to build a money transfer app.
Discovery Phase
At Sloboda Studio, we recommend starting the P2P money transfer app development process with the discovery phase.
The discovery stage includes competitor and market research and client interviews. Discovery helps to determine the core and unique features need for the app, as well as the optimal tech solutions needed for these features.
Building a User-Friendly UX Design
After conducting the discovery phase, start to build a user-friendly UX concept and product prototypes. Remember that your money transfer app is going to be used not only on desktops but also on tablets and especially smartphones. Thus, your product has to be adapted to various devices.
Money Transfer Software Development
Before the development of an app like Revolut, let’s start with the basics. Money transfer systems provide their users with such functionality as:
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- Ability to manage different types of transfers
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- Support for multiple countries, languages, and currencies
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- Integrated security and privacy standards and regulations
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- Availability of several money transfer options, such as online and mobile transfers
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- Integration with fraud protection software and anti-money laundering software
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- Transaction fee tracking
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- Foreign exchange software integration
During the development stage, your team will work on the integration of all the core features. Remember, it’s also necessary to integrate user management modules into the app. This allows administrators to be able to manage user information to better assist the clients. Also, using the user management module, it is possible to assign various rights and roles to users.
We recommend using Agile principles and working in sprints when building the app. Such an approach will allow you to meet regularly, see the results of your work, fix any issues, and discuss further development plans.
Another major decision to take when building the app is whether it should be built from scratch or use app builders with ready-made features.
Ensuring Security
As with any banking app, your money transfer application requires the highest security to establish the safety of your customers. Consider taking advantage of identity verification.
Services such as Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) help companies to verify users and prevent fraud. It is also highly recommended to include counter-terrorism financing compliance.
If you are just starting the development of a fintech app like Revolut, consider compliance with basic but necessary security options, such as data encryption, backups and recovery, limited access to certain parts of your system, and session time limits.
10 Must-Have Features Of a Money Transfer App
Before companies know how to create a money transfer app like Revolut, it’s crucial to define the core features.
Bill payments
This feature is needed to provide your future customers with the ability to pay bills at any time and from any place online. Paying bills is always seen as a burden. This feature will help give your product an additional competitive advantage and attract new customers.
Splitting and paying bills with Revolut
E-wallets
E-wallets can be online mobile service or app that allows users to make electronic transactions.
When integrating such a wallet, users can interact with the service and pay contactless in every country they visit without having to create multiple bank accounts each time.
Revolut cryptocurrency wallet
Online ID check
Online ID verification is a process that helps to check whether your app interacts with a real person. An online ID check also ensures that your users are who they claim to be. Such a process prevents your product and your customers from any kind of fraud.
Adding an online ID check as an account confirmation stage helps you make your own peer-to-peer payment system safer for your customers. It is helping them to feel more protected. We recommend integrating automated verification requests and setting money limits.
Revolut ID Verification
Payment Statistics
A payment statistics system is a set of features that helps to visualize all the user’s transactions by such criteria as volume, status, receiver, or even country.
These features are especially good for those users who like managing their finances. Therefore, your mobile platform will be more convenient and user-friendly, attracting new customers, and making their experience smooth.
Revolut payment statistics
Notifications and Alerts
Any notification is important. It allows you to inform your customers about all the actions within their banking accounts. For instance, you inform people about the status of their transactions, payments, or monthly subscriptions.
Revolut notifications
International Transfers and Currency Exchange
Traditional money transfers can be long, delayed, or require exorbitant fees.
Moreover, though international transfers aren’t new for modern banking, traditional banks often demand that clients visit a physical branch to conduct a transfer. Integrating online transfers and exchanges to a banking mobile app account would enable users to send and receive their money within a few seconds and swipes.
Revolut currency exchange
Multilingual Interface
If you just start to create a peer-to-peer money transfer app, you can use a single language. It’s enough for MVP goals – for example, to represent your product to customers and investors.
But at later stages, it is worth considering adding multiple languages to a user account. This would help you grow and expand worldwide, attracting more new customers in each country.
Revolut multilingual interface
Support
The support isn’t actually a feature. It is a system of features that guarantee your customers can get help when they have questions or problems.
Your support system should include at least live chat, email, or call features. However, online chats remain the most convenient choice. Your customers can get the fastest support by asking a question in the mobile in-app chat.
When it comes to fintech products, and especially for mobile online banking, it is essential that users feel protected when using a product. The support features gradually increase users’ sense of security and encourage them to use the software more.
Revolut customer support
Integrations
Integrations are required to connect with other world banks and money transferring systems via API and other protocols.
Money transferring mobile app can be connected with different banks your customers use. So they can control their funds using your app.
This way, your customers can access their assets in different places worldwide by using your money transfer app. For example, ICICI Bank offers an API for open banking between banks and customers.
Revolut business integrations
Our Experience
CityFALCON
CityFALCON is a fintech news aggregator. Its score rates financial tweets, news, and authors using Natural Language Processing. CityFALCON makes it easier to monitor financial news and more accessible for traders and investors to receive essential information to make the correct financial decisions.
Our solutions:
When we started collaborating with CityFALCON, our client needed to improve an existing project MVP. Our main goals were to create a clean and simple UX, build a scalable architecture, and add a news processing scoring algorithm.
CityFALCON is now a fully-developed project that helps people who work with finances, trading, and transactions to build their businesses more effectively. We are proud to say that we exceeded all the initial goals. CityFALCON fully-developed iOS and Android mobile systems with voice assistant integration, an NLP-powered news feed, and a cryptocurrency coverage launch.
We have been working with CityFalcon for 5 years now. Also, the project is in the TOP-50 startups of Great Britain awarded by Google and Microsoft and raised $4.7M.
CrowdInvest
CrowdInvest is a social crowd investing application that is created for investment clubs. With this app, users can learn, invest, and collaborate together.
The client came to us to create a social crowd investing application for collaborative investment. To start with, we suggested developing an MVP product. Our goal was to first build mobile apps for IOS and Android.
Our Solution
To ensure that the app met all project requirements, our QA engineer needed to do the following:
- Business cycle testing
- Function testing
- Installation testing
- Configuration
- Failover
- Recovery testing
We created the MVP of the CrowdInvest mobile application with clear architecture. A number of features were also added, including:
- Registration
- Invites
- email and SMS notifications
- Access to real-time market data.
How to Create a Money Transfer App
To create a money transfer app:
1. Define the app’s purpose and target users.
2. Plan app features, including secure authentication, account linking, and payment integration.
3. Design a user-friendly interface.
4. Develop robust backend infrastructure and integrate with trusted payment gateways.
5. Test, refine, and launch the app.
How To Ensure That Your Money Transfer App is Secure
Security and ease of use are among the things customers look for when dealing with finances. Anything involving bank transactions or money exchange needs to be treated with care and attention. That is why it’s vital to ensure that the app is secure.
Here are some things to take into consideration when building a money transfer app:
Introducing 3D Security
This is a technology that was introduced by international payment companies like Visa and MasterCard. It is designed to ensure that online payments are secured.
Here, the cardholder’s identity needs to be verified before the transaction can be completed. This has significantly helped to decrease fraud and theft.
Non-Stop Monitoring
Transactions that occur on your mobile platform should be constantly monitored to find suspicious activities.
For example, users’ accounts and banking activities can be constantly monitored. If there is a money transfer to a new or suspicious location, it is blocked until the user can verify that they are the ones trying to carry out the transaction.
Due to the huge amount of data that needs to be processed, manual transaction monitoring is unfeasible. Keeping that in mind, banks usually implement a suitable transaction monitoring solution to automate this process. This eliminates the chances of human error and increases the speed and accuracy of suspicious activity detection.
Using Biometrics
In the IT field, biometrics involves using a person’s unique features like fingerprint and facial attributes to log into applications.
Biometric authentication technologies like Face ID and Touch ID are relatively new technologies for the general public. However, they are one of the most secure and user-friendly methods to ensure safety usage of mobile money transfer apps.
Types of Money Transfer Software
Nowadays, money transfer software can be divided into two main categories:
- Outward Remittance – when the money transfer occurs outside the borders of your country. For example, transferring money from your account to the account of a vendor overseas.
- Inward Remittance – referring to money or funds received from overseas or a different country. For instance, getting paid by a client who lives in another country.
Money transfer apps can also be classified based on the needs of your business. That is why you need to have a good understanding of your business requirements before building the app:
Person-to-Person (P2P) Payment System
A P2P payment app allows the transfer of funds from one individual to another using a trusted payment platform. These types of payments are done with the help of personal computers, smartphones, or tablets. In addition, an internet connection is required for the payment to go through. One of the most used P2P payment systems is Cash App.
CashApp Home Page
Business-to-Business (B2B) Money Transfer System
B2B is an online method of payment between businesses. This type of transaction often occurs when a business needs the products or services of another business. A good example of a B2B payment solution is Stripe.
Stripe Home Page
Digital Remittance Services
Digital money transfer apps are gaining popularity in developing countries. People can now easily transfer money to others for a small fee based on the transaction sum. This has made it possible for people to obtain goods and services easily without needing to worry about heavy bank charges and lengthy processes. One of the best digital remittance services is Wise, which is used by millions of people worldwide.
Wise Home Page
Electronic Bill Payment Services
Electronic bill payment services have made it possible to pay bills online from anywhere in the world. Here, users can use the application to transfer money from their personal credit or debit cards to vendors. In the US, Prism is the go-to app people use for bill payments.
Prism Home Page
Cost to Build Custom Money Transfer Application
Any app development process is complex. It consists of different stages, and is full of details you should pay attention to. Starting with the discovery phase and first wireframes development, your product will go through the technologies-choosing and features-determination phase. Therefore, make sure you’ve planned all of the below steps:
Number of Features
A complex mobile app, requires more time and money for the development of its architecture. That’s why we always recommend starting with the discovery phase to outpoint the core features you need for a decent MVP.
By starting development only with the core features, you can:
- Save time and money
- Launch faster
- Get your first customers before presenting your product to investors
- Scale quicker
Technology
There are lots of technologies in the mobile app development market. Pay more attention to flexible and scalable tech solutions for development. “Start-up-friendly” technologies like Ruby on Rails, Python, or PHP, allow you to build and scale your product on budget. On the other hand, the more complicated ones like Java will require more money.
It is worth considering the popularity of chosen technology. Popular languages and frameworks provide you with a bigger pool of qualified developers. Remember it as a start-up whose goal is focusing on speed and scalability.
Staff Costs
Labor costs are driven by team size and seniority. It can also be affected by and taxes or office rentals. This can take a big part of your budget.
However, you can save some costs by choosing to outsource over in-house. Outsourcing development models allow you to start collaboration at budget prices.
That is why being an offshore development agency, Sloboda Studio can offer competitive rates for the high-quality expertise of the dedicated development teams.
| Company location | Hourly rates, USD |
| The US and Canada | 50 – 250 |
| Australia | 50 – 150 |
| Western Europe and the UK | 35 – 170 |
| Eastern Europe | 20 – 150 |
| India and Southeast Asia | 10 – 80 |
Hourly rates for devs by location
Getting a License
How to create a mobile money transfer app like Revolut? First, you should get a license to ensure your product meets all the law requirements. For example, the European electronic money license applicants should have a detailed business plan, structured organization, good team and risk management, and a minimum mandatory capital of 350 000€.
Legal Costs
Starting a money transferring service, you’ll spend some extra legal costs. Your investors and customers will be interested in lots of details about your product. For example, how you’re going to transfer money or how good is the account security. An experienced lawyer can make things simple. However, the prices depend on a particular country.
Marketing
Sometimes vendors pay all the attention to product development forgetting about its promotion. Such an approach is risky because you may lose time if you start the marketing campaign after the development.
Working with start-ups for over ten years, we’d recommend working on software development and promoting one product at a time.
Once you begin implementing the core features, start telling your target audience about your product. In this case, promotion helps to get new interested clients. It also makes your product well-known and trusted among your potential users.
Reasons to Create Your Custom Money Transfer Software
Based on the data obtained and the number of money transfer applications, the question pops up – Why should businesses create a money transfer application?
Everything is Moving Online
Our modern world is changing: people have less time to stay in one place for too long. Everything is moving online and becoming more mobile.
Why use an old-fashioned bank with its physical branches and queues?
A better option would be to use a smart mobile app that allows people to transfer money and make other payments.
Banking digitization makes it easier to use money transfers and online payments. But that’s not all.
Money transferring software like Revolut also allows its customers to use such expanded functionality as insurance, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, splitting payments, or virtual saving accounts — all within a single mobile application.
Growth of Demand
It’s been 7 years since Revolut was born. Since then, many neo-banking applications have appeared, and many vendors have started building a peer-to-peer payment app infrastructure. These days, you can see that the demand for fast payment has grown significantly and still prevails over the supply.
Online Banking for Business Needs
Nowadays, money transferring software can be used not only by individuals but by businesses, too. The development of a mobile money transfer app can come in handy not only for regular customers but also for businesses. This makes a great opportunity for building new business collaborations and continuing to grow the neo-banking segment.
What is a Money Transfer Software?
A money transfer app is a system enabling its users to perform banking transactions using cashless modes of payment, with multi-bank and multi-currency options. Moreover, such an application, unlike traditional banks, is available at any time.
A money transfer app like Revolut is considered “neobanks”. Neobanks operate exclusively online and do not have any physical branches, allowing them to provide their customers with the fastest digital and mobile financial solutions, and allowing customers to pay, transfer, or lend money online.
The Revolut app is among the top money transfer apps worldwide and was founded in 2015. In the 5 years since then, it is clear that the idea of neo-banking and money transferring software is a popular, profitable, and growing industry.
Every day, the demand for money-transferring services continues to grow. Transaction value in the Digital Remittances segment is projected to reach $55.68bn in 2022 with an annual growth rate (CAGR 2022-2026) of 7.24%.
Building a money transfer app?
Final Thoughts
To ensure that the app brings in profits, apply for a minimum viable product (MVP). It will contain all the core features of the app. Also, it shows users what they will get when the final version comes out. The MVP can also be used to attract investors.
Still, have questions? At Sloboda Studio, we have been transforming business ideas into code. And have been actively providing solutions to real-world problems for 13 years. Creating money transferring software is a fascinating process that can be simplified by Slobodo’s experts. Working with us is always worth it; just look at Revolut. Businesses can go online, and traditional banking is already digital.
Ready to build a product similar to the Revolut app? Follow these three steps!
1. Think about your business plan and monetization.
2. Evaluate the core features you should implement first
3. Ensure your product follows all necessary legal requirements.
Are you interested in building a money transfer app? Book a free consultation with us.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to create a money transfer app?
The cost of building a money transfer app will significantly vary depending on its features and other factors, including project specifications. So, the cost will be calculated based on the features that are added to the app.
How do I start a money transfer service?
First, you need to get a license to be able to provide money transfer services. Also, most countries like the US will need a way to monitor the business to ensure that you are not money laundering.
Now, start your business once the license is ready. However, you need to decide if the business should be online or have a physical presence, or both. It is good to weigh the pros and cons of each option.
It is also good to create relationships with banks since your business will be transferring money to them.
How does a money transfer app work?
Money transfer apps help users carry out bank transactions, currency exchange, and other financial activities online. Unlike traditional banks that have a closing time and physical location, these apps allow users to do transactions at any time, worldwide.
