Fintech market overview
Before talking ideas, any entrepreneur has to run a diagnostic market check. Even the most elaborate and innovative hypothesis can fail to work out. So, numbers and facts first.
We consulted some recent studies which revealed that a fintech startup is truly a prime opportunity. The pandemic catalyzed the adoption of digital services in all areas of life, the financial sector included. Since then, the industry has been growing even more and more appealing for venturers.
These are some startup-friendly consequences of this:
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- Banks have gone digital, according to McKinsey report stating that 73% of bank transactions take place online.
- People prefer remote over in person, as revealed by Boston Consulting Group, customer loyalty score for offline banking is 23 out of 100 while online it reaches 90.
- Mobile payment beats cash, judging by the same report that claims 89% of people pay using smartphones.
- Revenues in the fintech industry are growing, Boston consultants project $1.5 trillion growth by 2030.
For now North America has the largest fintech market in the world and it’s also the most favorable for newborn entrepreneurs. The region and the US in particular remains a strong startup cluster housing investors, potential businessmen and IT talents.
Fintech trends
The fintech industry follows the crowd so to speak. Say, artificial intelligence has got its place here as well as super apps. We’ve selected some of the most promising for the future fintech market.
Super apps
At the dawn of mobile development, businesses thought that one app should serve one goal. But the digital world has changed and now users like to have it all in one product. This is the concept behind super applications. They come as umbrella fintech solutions covering a bunch of functions at one time.
Like Uber that brings food, gives you a ride, delivers stuff and helps entrepreneurs run freight business. Regarding fintech startups, super apps can combine features like budget and insurance management, bills and taxes payment, wallets, loans etc.
Sustainable business
Over the past years, banks and neobanks have been gradually shifting away from quantity to quality. Earlier fintech companies strived to hook in as many customers as possible while now they are more into long-term relationships.
With the fintech industry being flooded with hundreds of products, even the slightest unfriendliness puts you at risk of losing customers. Your audience can always download another app and remove yours. Digital banking institutions don’t want that and therefore put more effort into retaining customer loyalty.
Generative artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is all the rage. In case you haven’t heard about generative AI, it’s the neural network technology capable of generating new content and predicting things based on data patterns. Fintech startups benefit from this trend both in terms of tech potential and marketing, as AI sounds more catchy for users. As for practical value, it speeds up customer support, helps detect fraudulent activity, offers financial guidance and assess investment risks.
Crypto & blockchain
Incredible for the 21st century, but true—around 1 billion people worldwide use smartphones but remain unbanked or underbanked. For various reasons banks can’t reach them and this gives the greenlight for the market of decentralized finance. It offers trading of digital currencies without dealing with banks, exchanges or brokerages.
This fintech market allows users with no bank accounts to trade cryptocurrencies. Compared to traditional money, they are faster to transfer and stronger in terms of personal security. DeFi runs on blockchain that strongly protects users’ financial data.
Biometric security
With financial data being one of the most tempting for fraudsters, the market players keep trying new means of security. Biometric authentication has enhanced the protective potential. It uses face, voice, or fingerprint to verify the identity for using fintech products. This is a safer approach in contrast to PINs and passwords.
With biometrics you can leverage user experience for mobile payment services. Like Apple does with its Face ID and Touch ID. Users just need a quick glance into the camera or a slight touch of the button to make a purchase.
The list of trends in the fintech industry doesn’t end here. You can also consider gamification, micro SaaS development or a bunch of other tendencies that are trending now.
Top 10 ideas for fintech startups
Here we’ve selected ten trending fintech startup ideas you can feel to borrow. However, before hitting the market you have to understand your product niche. In case there isn’t any, you might want to rethink it, as building it from scratch is a money-consuming business.
For you to gain a deeper understanding of the perspective of each idea we have added two market parameters.
Market size | Refers to the amount of potential users of a digital product and the total revenue the sales can generate |
Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) | Refers to the percentage at which product sales increase on an annual basis. This metric is helpful for forecasting the growth or decline of sales, and is particularly crucial for strategic planning. |
So, let’s move on to fintech startup app ideas that you can use for product development.
Key to emojis:
💡 — brief description of the idea
📈 — market perspectives
📱 — use case
#1 Money exchange platform
💡User links a card, shares their contact list, sends & receives money, requests payments.
📈Market size is expected to be valued at $110.8 billion with CAGR growth of 15.8% by 2032.
📱KEM
The first in our list of fintech app ideas is a money exchange platform. The application serves users by facilitating transfer of money and requesting payments. See the screenshot above showing the interface of KEM, Kuwait-based fintech startup. We designed an app in the style of a social network. Users have personal profiles, transaction history and contact lists for faster exchange. You can link several cards and send reminders about payments. We released KEM as an MVP to help the startup secure investments. In the future, entrepreneurs can scale up the product by adding an AI financial advisor, crypto exchange or mobile payment.
#2 Peer-to-peer lending app
💡User takes a loan from other people on their terms and returns it with monthly payments.
📈Market size is expected to be valued at $976.3 million with CAGR growth of 29.9% by 2031.
📱Prosper: Personal Loans
This peer-to-peer platform resembles a marketplace, where people post offers with money sums to loan and terms of deals. The audience prefers not to go through institutions and would rather borrow personally under convenient conditions. Of all P2P products in the fintech industry we recommend studying the Prosper app. It has an intuitive interface where users can choose offers, track their payment progress and manage deal details. A clear and self-explanatory journey here is highly important as the concept of P2P can still sound strange for some users.
#3 Trading & investing app
💡Application for micro-investors where any user can trade financial assets like stocks or lock up money 24/7.
📈Market size is expected to be valued at $124 billion with CAGR growth of over 19% by 2032.
📱Robinhood
Any list of fintech startup ideas would naturally include software for trading and investing. The concept seems comprehensible and easier to embrace for newborn entrepreneurs: a real-life stock exchange inside a smartphone with stocks to buy and sell. Trading applications are worth developing as well, you can watch as the market evolves and grows. For benchmarking, google “Robinhood app”. This one has an intuitive, minimalistic yet catchy UI with clearly structured information. You can start with classic trading for an MVP and leverage it later with a crypto section or AI trading assistants.
#4 Crypto e-wallet
💡Users make mobile payments, store a history of financial transactions, monitor market rates.
📈Market size is expected to be valued at $51.53 billion with CAGR growth of 27.4% by 2030.
📱OpenWallet
Of course you can take the low road and develop a fiat currency wallet, but we believe that crypto is a more promising fintech app idea. It’s simply too hard to compete with ApplePay or GooglePay and the functionality of crypto wallets is more variable and scalable. Take OpenWallet as a reference. Here users can make financial transactions, keep track of market movements, and receive crypto payments. If you’re after fintech startup ideas to release an MVP this is a concept to consider.
#5 Crowdfunding app
💡Single users and organizations raise money for the causes they care about.
📈There’s hardly any data on fundraising applications, but the entire crowdfunding market is expected to be valued at $59 billion with CAGR growth of 16.1% by 2030.
📱GoFundMe
Crowdfunding applications serve as an intermediary between fundraisers and the people willing to donate. Those in search of sponsorship can sign up as volunteering entities, charity companies or even single users in need of support. One of the most popular fintech solutions of this type is GoFundMe. Fundraisers can post their stories, receive donations, see budgeting progress, share updates for supporters, respond to the sponsors and transfer money to a bank.
#6 App for personal finance management
💡Users track expenses, plan monthly budgets, analyze their financial behavior, and set goals.
📈Market size is expected to be valued at $4.2 billion with CAGR growth of 12.2% by 2032.
📱Mint Intuit
Budgeting apps help people improve their financial control by analyzing expenses, categorizing costs and showing ways to practice better spending. For some platforms for personal finance management you can connect credit cards to provide access to the stats in mobile digital banking services. With strong data analytics, budgeting apps turn out to be an irreplaceable tool to visualize stats, predict monthly expenses, and advise on saving strategies. If you want a reference, see Mint Intuit. It combines all the above-mentioned functions topped with the abilities to set goals, get credit scores, file and track taxes.
#7 AI chatbot
💡Users apply to AI chatbot for help in reaching financial goals instead of searching for information manually.
📈Financial AI chatbots is a new niche, but you can refer to AI in fintech market, that’s expected to be valued at $61.30 billion with CAGR growth of 22.5% by 2031.
📱Cleo chatbot
In fact, Cleo is the first AI chatbot designed specifically to render personal financial help. Of all fintech startup ideas on this list, this assistant sounds like the most adventurous idea. The market is new and you can’t really predict its movements. Though the whole concept seems promising with neural networks developing too fast. Cleo focuses on young adults, it can roast you for reckless expenses, send you GIFs and answer all questions about money management of course. It deserves attention at least for the tone of voice.
#8 Insurance app
💡Users manage one or several insurance policies, file claims, contact insurance agents.
📈Insurtech market size is expected to be valued at $114 billion with CAGR growth of 46.1% by 2032.
📱Lemonade
In fact, insurtech is a an independent market. Policy-holders have to pay for their plans regularly and the friendliest way to do it is by using one application. Insurance applications allow hassle-free access to policies, fast claim settlements and coverage adjustments. Like Lemonade Insurance does. This is an idea to consider, as the software saves customers from wasting time on calls, inconvenient payments and so on.
#9 Mobile payment app
💡Users store debit & credit cards, make fast payments, transfer money.
📈Market size is expected to be valued at $607.9 billion with CAGR growth of 35.5% by 2030.
📱PayPal
Mobile payment applications are similar to money exchange platforms. True, but the latter is more limited in functions. You could potentially start with a simple feature like peer-to-peer payments then grow the application to an all round payment solution. It would offer enhanced digital banking services, like online shopping via payment apps, cashback, paying in parts or with QR-codes. PayPal perfectly combines all these features in one product. This is perhaps the only product in the list aiming to become the next super app whose services can soon expand beyond just paying for things online.
#10 Accounting software
💡Entrepreneurs run all business finance matters in one application.
📈Market size is expected to be valued at $70.2 billion with CAGR growth of 19.6% by 2030.
📱QuickBooks
The final idea for you, is to create a product not for personal use, but built for enterprises. They too want convenient digital banking and friendly fintech products. Businesses need to keep the books and utilize accounting applications to help handle matters hasslefree and streamline most of the processes. In QuickBooks entrepreneurs create invoices, track and receive payments, analyze and forecast cash flow, track sales and manage taxes.
There’s more to it than the ten concepts described above. Digital banking and fintech in general has a lot more to offer—you can see it for yourself in this list, for instance.
In case these examples failed to arouse enthusiasm, there are other markets out there. We’ve shared some concepts for mobile apps that sound relevant in 2023.
Our experience in fintech
We have released over 300 products and fintech occupies the largest share in our portfolio—around 50%. The list comprises banking apps, crypto wallets, investment services, NFT marketplaces, finance management tools and so on.
Our team partners with entrepreneurs of various backgrounds and our approach is based on transparent communication and consistent workflow.
What our team can do for you
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- help formulate the idea;
- choose and prioritize functions for your app;
- map out user journey to make sure audience reaches the goal;
- design your product interface;
- code everything out;
- test and release;
- support your product during further iterations.
- If you want to get an estimation of your project, fill in the form below.
If some of the fintech startup ideas mentioned in this article have stuck in your mind, maybe that’s a sign to consider making your move. Read the article of how to begin your journey as a fintech entrepreneur to know more about the niche and make the final decision.