Top 5 Fintech Apps for Better Wealth Management (Bonus: How to Make One)

Did you know that out of 519 new unicorns that emerged in 2021, 113 were fintech startups? That’s nearly a quarter of total billion-dollar businesses that emerged in 2021, showing how promising the future of Fintech is.

Whether you are a professional looking for top fintech apps for better wealth management and seamless digital banking experience or an entrepreneur looking to partner with a fintech app development company to bring your fintech app idea to life, read on!

This blog is a detailed guide about the fintech industry, covering the top fintech apps available today and the key features that differentiate them. It will further explain different types of fintech apps, their benefits, monetization strategies, and a brief overview of how to make a fintech app.

So without further ado, let’s get started!

What Fintech Really Is?

The term Fintech was coined back in 1993 by Citigroup. However, it started gaining popularity not more than a decade ago when digital banking became a mainstream practice.

Since the pandemic, the term fintech has been used as a catchphrase to describe anything and everything involving finance and technology.

In the real world, Fintech involves emerging technologies such as mobile apps and custom software applications that enable people to manage their finances more effectively by investing, lending, borrowing, and trading money online without involving traditional banks and other financial sectors.

This revolutionary concept of managing wealth and finance on the go using a mobile app has gained immense popularity over recent years. Every nine out of ten people in the US have at least one fintech app on their smartphones, and these numbers are not coming down any time soon!

Types of Fintech Applications

Although Fintech itself is a broad term encompassing different aspects of financial technology, it can be generally divided into the following five main categories:

• Online banking
• Personal finance
• Investment
• Crypto trading
• Budgeting & Trading

Top 5 Fintech Apps in 2023

Here is a breakdown of the five best fintech apps available today with their key features and monetization strategies:

1. Money Lion – Online Banking

Money Lion tops our list of the top fintech apps, providing peer-to-peer loans and financial services to around 4 million users.

It is a subscription-based fintech application providing research-backed, actionable insights and a plethora of financial services to users for a monthly subscription fee of $19.99.

Within just five years of its launch in the fintech market, Money Lion has become the one-stop destination for investing, borrowing, and lending on the go. As of today, Money Lion is valued at $2.4 billion and is considered one of the best fintech apps ever made.

Key Features of Money Lion

• Free transactions in over 55000 ATMs globally
• Interest-free loans up to $300 within minutes
• Instant fund transfer without any transaction fees
• Up to 13% instant cashback rewards
• Real-time credit score tracking with suggestions to improve it
• A well-organized, easy-to-use wealth management dashboard
• In-app automated investment options in stocks and crypto

Monetization Strategy of Money Lion

Money Lion is a subscription-based fintech application providing top-notch wealth management and other financial services for $19.99 per month. Besides its subscription fees, Money Lion generates revenue through cashback programs, credit repair and loans, and lead generation.

Today, Money Lion has over a million paying customers and has become a publicly traded company within just five years. We have also written a blog on Apps Like MoneyLion that you can read.

2. Chime – Personal Finance

Chime, the second on our list of top fintech apps, is a digital banking fintech conglomerate headquartered in San Francisco.

It’s a free-of-cost digital banking service committed to delivering a hassle-free online banking experience. It has over 12 million active users, with nearly 8 million using Chime as the primary digital bank, making it the undisputed leader in online banking.

Chime has the competitive advantage of offering totally free online banking services, with no monthly fees, no ATM fees across 60,000 ATMs, no transaction charges, and no other hidden charges, making it one of the top fintech apps available today.

Key Features of Chime

• Early access to paychecks
• Interest on savings as low as a penny
• No transaction fee for 60,000+ ATMs
• Fee-free seamless digital banking experience
• Integration with other mobile payment apps

3. Coinbase – Crypto Trading

Coinbase falls under the crypto trading category and ranks third on our top five fintech apps list. It’s the number one cryptocurrency exchange platform, with over 90 million users globally. The app’s impregnable security measures, user-friendly interface, and excess of valuable guides and tutorials about crypto make it a favorite for enthusiasts.

As of today, Coinbase supports over 150 cryptocurrencies for trading, with transaction fees as low as 0.5%. It allows users to purchase fractions of cryptocurrencies as low as $25, enabling users to invest in their favorite currencies, regardless of their buying capacity.

Coinbase also insures against any cyber-attack or stealing of cryptocurrencies on its platform. With crypto scams increasing routinely, this approach eliminates all the complications of storing and trading cryptocurrencies.

Key Features of Coinbase

• A one-stop shop for buying, selling, trading, and storing cryptocurrencies
• Insurance against any cyber attack
• Graphs and charts to project the performance of cryptocurrencies
• Instant access to the price of any currency at any given time or date
• Simpler, one-click trading and exchange
• Exchange rates as low as 0.5%
• Regular forecast about popular cryptocurrencies
• Trusted by 90 million crypto enthusiasts around the world

Monetization Strategy of Coinbase

Coinbase has a rather simple monetization strategy. It charges a commission fee for every transaction made using the platform. The fee is inversely proportional to the amount involved; it can be as low as 0.5% for high transactions and as high as 4% for transactions involving low amounts and volatile currencies.

4. Mint – Budgeting & Personal Finance

Mint is the best fintech app for budgeting and wealth management. It helps users plan their monthly or weekly budget and track expenses automatically to create a financial projection of their spending.

Mint allows the integration of digital bank accounts and crypto wallets. It automatically updates any transaction made so that users can keep track of their spending for a better financial future. It has exceptional built-in features like a net worth calculator, automated savings, bill payment tracker, credit score checker, and more.

Mint currently has over 25 million active users and has both free and paid versions of the app available globally.

Key Features of Mint

• Free credit score calculator
• Create budgets and monitor financial spending
• Link all the digital accounts to a single place
• Instant money transfer without any fees
• Top-notch security and privacy
• Free financial analysis and projections

Monetization Strategy of Mint

Although most of the features of Mint are available for free, it does offer a premium version for $4.99 per month. The premium version of Mint lets users perform expenditure analysis for data-driven insights and offer better budgeting and forecasting tools.

5. Robinhood – Investment & Trading

Robinhood is an online investment and trading fintech app allowing users to invest in publicly traded stocks, crypto, and ETFs for free. It’s a one-stop solution for investing in stock shares, especially for beginners.

The commission-free approach of Robinhood has helped it gain immense popularity among stock enthusiasts, venture capitalists, and investors. As of today, Robinhood has managed to raise over $10 billion and is currently valued at $32 billion.

Whether you want to exchange a fraction of bitcoin with Ethereum or purchase stocks of publicly traded companies, you can do all of that using Robinhood for free.

Key Features of Robinhood

• Multiple investment options, including stocks, ETFs, and crypto
• Commission-free trading and exchange
• Actionable insights from real-time market data
• Expense tracking and cash management facilitates
• Integration with over 4000 global banks
• Free trading of cryptocurrencies
• Intuitive app design and seamless transactions

Monetization Strategy of Robinhood

Robinhood has multiple revenue streams despite not charging its users a single penny. Most of its profits come from interests on margin loans and securities. The app also has a premium version named Robinhood Gold, which gives access to professional research and market insights for $5 per month.

The Future of Fintech

Seeing the unprecedented growth of fintech apps in recent years, we can say that fintech apps are the future. Research conducted by Insider Intelligence suggests that the fintech industry will soon reach a whopping market capital of $305 billion before 2025.

Thus, we conclude that the future of Fintech is rather promising, and there is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to capitalize on it by building a fintech app startup.

How to Build a Fintech App?

Here’s how to build a fintech app from scratch in 2023.

Narrow Down Your Niche

Fintech apps are generally divided into five main categories. As an entrepreneur, your first step should be narrowing down this list and determining which category you want to choose. You can start by analyzing fintech market trends and pick a category based on numbers and facts. Another approach could be not caring about the numbers and picking one purely on intuition.

For instance, I would pick crypto trading over the other four any day out of my love for blockchain and cryptography. Similarly, you must pick a niche to further your fintech app development process.

Define the Scope

Once you have chosen a fintech app development category, the next step is to define the scope of your fintech app. In simple words, you now need to create a document finalizing your app’s core features and functionalities.

To define the scope of your fintech app, you must first conduct market research and analyze fintech stats from credible sources to learn what features most of the top fintech apps in your niche have in common. For instance, if you pick the budgeting and personal finance category, the feature common in most budgeting apps is a graphical representation of monthly expenditures.

Choose Tech Stack

After defining the app scope and carefully planning features and monetization strategy, you are now slowly moving to the development phase. But before you hire app developers, you need to decide what tech stack you will proceed with.

Simply put, you need to figure out what platform your potential customers mostly use between iOS and Android. This decision is probably the most crucial one as it greatly influences the future and the overall cost of your Fintech App. How? Well, if most of your target audience uses iOS smartphones, you can skip the Android version of your app for now and use that money in the marketing of your app.

Hire an App Development Company

Now, the last step is to hire an app development company that understands the complexities of building a fintech app and does not agree with everything you say just for the sake of closing a client.

Building a mobile app is expensive and requires substantial capital investment. Before you partner up with an app development company, you must conduct a brief background check for their online reputation, portfolio, and experience in the industry.

It is better to conduct discovery sessions and interviews with your potential app development partners to know if they are worth investing in or not.