Android V/s iOS: Which Is Ideal To Build A Fintech App? – Opinion

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Since the fintech apps are increasingly becoming the most popular app niche as an increasing number of banks, financial organizations, investment firms, trading companies, and insurance companies are opting for mobile apps, fintech apps will continue pushing for growth.

But if a financial organization wants to build a mobile app, which OS platform it should give utmost priority to? Well, among the only two leading OS platforms, iOS, and Android, it is a challenge to make a straightforward choice since both holds in their fold millions of customers and investors. The question proves to be more important if you need to hire app developers of any one platform expertise to develop a native fintech app. If you need to prioritize, which will be your first choice?

Instead of trying to give a straightforward answer, we would rather like to explain the strengths of both platforms. But before that, we need to take a look at the growth and popularity of fintech apps. 

Global Fintech Apps: Where They Really Stand? 

 A great majority of financial institutions already believe that they are going to lose to the standalone fintech brands in the coming years if they don’t embrace fintech solutions for their offerings. While Fintech market traditionally was restricted to the US, England, France, and China, they are slowly expanding to other nations that are being dubbed as the emerging economies. Brazil, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa are becoming some of the most promising battlegrounds for future fintech companies. 

 In this respect, the recent facelift in the ecosystem of the fintech apps needs to be considered. A whole array of investment advisory and stockbroking fintech apps have now emerged to push the growth of financial technologies to the next level. The success stories of apps like Nubank, MoneyLion, Robinhood, Nubank have become the eye-opening inspirations for a vast majority of financial organizations thinking about hopping on the fintech bandwagon. 

Types of fintech apps 

If you are going to build fintech apps for your financial organization, you need to have a clear idea about the various types of fintech apps and their context of use as well as the purpose they serve. Let us have a look at the leading kinds of fintech apps. 

•             Mobile banking apps allowing digital money transfer, utility transactions like bill payment, and money management solutions like expense tracking, make a very popular niche of fintech apps.
•             Apps major financial activities like loans, stock trading, investment, and financial advice are another crucial type of fintech app.
•             Apps for cryptocurrency and Bitcoin transactions and payment gateway integration is a popular type of fintech app.

Android vs iOS: Which is Ideal for Fintech Apps? 

When considering building fintech apps, an organization needs to make a choice between the two leading platforms, iOS, and Android. While Android from 2016 has become the leading mobile platform with the highest number of users and presence across the globe, iOS is still considered formidable because of the highest concentration of high-net-worth users and because of a dominant presence in leading countries with most fintech companies. So, choosing between the two is not so easy.

Download and Revenue Figures

When it comes to the number of apps, Google Android Play Store boasts of a population of more than 2.6 million apps while iOS App Store boasts of more than 2 million apps across the niches. While iOS lags behind Android in a number of apps, in terms of app revenues, it remains far ahead of Android. In 2018, the iOS App Store generated nearly twice the revenue earned by Android. But in terms of downloads, iOS apps have been far behind the Android apps. This shows the revenue potential and high spending audience that the App Store still dominates. This is why any strategy of fintech apps primarily should take the App Store into consideration. 

Since the Apple App Store focuses more on premium or high-value customers while Android is focused on mass download numbers, fintech apps trying to garner good investment from high net worth people should give priority to iOS apps. On the other hand, common banking apps that seek to connect large numbers of people through mobile apps should give Android apps more priority.

Location

Some countries or regions around the globe have a higher concentration of Android users. Asia, South America, and Africa have a large volume of Android users while the US, North America, England, and Western Europe markets are dominated by iOS devices. So, as per the larger share of the audience of fintech apps in different regions, you should give priority to iOS or Android.

Features

Key features of the fintech app are another major consideration for giving priority to one platform. As more Apple users prefer buying using their phones compared to Android, iOS should enjoy priority for building fintech apps.

Development Cost

Development cost us a key consideration for prioritizing one platform over the other. The cost of development also depends upon the features of your fintech apps. Obviously, with state of the art features and enterprise-grade security, both Android and iOS apps will cost similar to an enterprise app rich with features. 

Because of a diverse devise ecosystem spreading across a multitude of brands and device capacities, Android apps cost a lot higher than iOS apps. On the other hand, stringent quality control policies and regulations make iOS development more demanding. So, iOS development requires more development expertise, and Android development involves more complexity in terms of device-level testing.

 Conclusion

 In conclusion, fintech apps are going to be the mainstream of financial business in the years to come. Though iOS seems to be ahead in the league because of its high-spending user base, Android will actually make fintech apps more popular among all sections of the populace.

Author Bio 

Paul Osborne is Chief Technical Officer at Cerdonis Technologies LLC – Mobile app development company in USA I Love to Keep My Self Updated About Web & Mobile Development By Reading, Analyzing & Researching. As Per My Technical Background, I am Interesting in Sharing My Thoughts & Idea on Mobile App Development Though My Writing Skills.