Fintech App Design Guide For 2022

Fintech App Design Guide For 2022 Ever since the fintech revolution began during the financial crisis in 2008, traditional financial institutions have been left behind because of their unwillingness to adopt new technologies.

The financial technology revolution has introduced better solutions for mobile payments, finance management tools, crowdfunding, peer to peer lending, and mortgages and loans.

Fintech startups have understood that this revolution is mainly due to increasing requirements for customer convenience and buying experience. The key to the better customer experience is the balance of simplicity and security in the fintech app designs.

The EY Global FinTech Adoption Index 2019 states that over the past two years, the fintech services adoption has almost doubled, as now 64% of the digitally active users interact with fintech apps.

Fintech App Design Principles Fintech apps that are very popular among customers are those which are designed to offer convenience and user-friendliness. These apps provide additional features to help customers manage their finance. The following are some of the fintech app design principles that every designer should be aware of before designing a fintech app.

Keep your focus on the customer journey Before you begin with the fintech UI design, it is crucial to understand the optimum app flow and customer journey. While designing, you’ll be working on the mobile app page layout and content management. Hence, the customer journey should be designed to motivate the user to use the app.

Needless to say that the app should solve the user’s pain-points by bringing an alternative service to a specific set of users or more convenient access to services that were previously a hassle to access. Therefore, it is essential for you as a designer to grasp the particular unique selling points of that fintech app, understand the target user base, and design the financial app accordingly.

Correctly placing the call to actions within the app pages help users take desired steps. Also, the details about any features should be ready whenever the user asks for it. These practices will boost the user’s confidence in using your fintech app.

Don’t overload the Fintech App design with information The most common mistake designers make with fintech app designs is overloading the user with information. It is not about how much information a page has; it is about how much of the available information will be useful for the user. While managing content on a page, you should always keep in mind the user experience. Consider the key information that the user is likely to need on each page. Most fintech app users cannot understand specific data or make sense of field-specific terms.

Most mobile app designers don’t focus on user comprehension ability. Users spend half of their time understanding information that is presented in boring text or excel sheets. Nobody likes to read just numbers; therefore the designers should visualise the data.

There is a quote by which you’ll understand what I’m trying to say – If you design the app good enough, the chances are that the user won’t know it is an app for financial services. In practice, a perfect fintech app design means an interface that is clean and easy to understand. The user should not need to be well taught in finance to enjoy using your application.

The example displayed above utilises animations to segment and manage a lot of information on one screen. There are various types of fintech apps and every fintech app has its own purpose.Therefore you need to prioritize how you present the financial data in your app in-line with your app purpose. This data visualisation consideration should occur while managing the content on every page.

Simplify complex data for valuable insights Fintech mobile apps possess an inevitable level of friction and boredom. Hence, it is crucial to provide the users with a simplistic UI/UX design, which requires minimal effort from them to operate the app. The fintech apps must transform complex financial data into easy to understand and actionable information.

Simplistic user interfaces are more likely to be memorised better, as neural links are easily made when the brain isn’t overwhelmed with too much information. When the user interacts with the app, their mind tries to perceive things as if the interaction result is predictable.

Hence, the fintech app design should be predictable for users to give them a sense of control. Stuffing too many elements will confuse or scare the user; therefore I recommend avoiding complex financial data aspects.

Also, the fintech app design must provide visualised financial data that allows users to take action. Your app could calculate any financial data; for example, you can visualise the user’s personal spending report, as stated in the following image.

The thing to be remembered is that the financial information you visualise for the user should be meaningful; otherwise, it’s useless to put your efforts into designing it. The best performing fintech apps alleviate the burden of bookkeeping and budgeting for the users.

If your fintech app deals in payments and personal spending, you should equip it with the mechanics that infuse healthy financial habits among your users, which ultimately increases their reliance on your app. These mechanics can either be the prime feature of your app, or they can be manifested with more granular design elements. Furthermore, if the user reaches their financial milestone, the app can also reward them for reinforcing their positive action.

Stay Consistent Consistency in the app design is crucial in terms of UX and branding. A successful fintech app design will correctly utilise the available development options to connect to the Organisations’ commercial goals. Also, the design used in the app should have an ability to evolve according to the changing objectives of the organisation.

Enlighten the User About Data Protection and Usage When it comes to money and finance, security is the most crucial aspect. Offering the ease of conducting financial transactions comes with the risk of data theft and transfer errors.

Every fintech app requires users to share their personal information to meet financial compliances and regulatory requirements.

Fintech apps use an additional layer of data security, i.e. additional logins and two-factor password authentication. Asking users to provide further information is a massive challenge for fintech organizations. Thus, it becomes crucial to explain to the users why the data is required and where their data will be used. This builds customer’s confidence in your fintech app.

Fintech App Design Elements Your fintech app design should have the following elements to offer an astonishing user experience to the users.

Background The background of your fintech app is directly related to the user experience and brand identity. The fintech UI design is responsible for the look and feel of the app, and the UI includes the colour pallets and background. The background should match or fit well with the logos and icons or vice versa; the point is to make the icons and logos simple to locate for easy navigation.

Your colour palette and background should also match with the latest industry trends. For example, modern apps have a dark mode option, and your fintech app can also adopt this trend. Also, options like night mode will make your app easily usable in the night or low light areas. Such options will help users easily use your app at night, where it is stressful to look at bright coloured backgrounds.

Animation App animations have become a standard app design element that ease-out the user’s interaction with the app and provide them with a pleasant experience. The possibilities of embedding animations in a mobile app are limitless. However, animations shouldn’t be the prominent design element used in an app. Instead, they should be considered as just an addition to the overall design.

For simple actions such as logging in, clicking a button, or just opening the menu, you shouldn’t use complex animations, as it can distract the user from the desired goal. The best animations are hardly noticeable during user interaction.

Colour Pallets The colour pallets are more than just visuals of the app. Studies show that 60% of people are attracted to an app or message based on the colour alone. A robust colour scheme will lay a foundation for the use of icons and images within the app. Also, while selecting the colour pallets for your fintech app, you should keep in mind how the data will be visualised too.

Fintech apps often use vivid graphics and illustrations to enhance the UX, which is very crucial for apps dealing with non-entertaining subjects like banking and finance. It is an important challenge for banking and investment apps, as these apps are increasingly being used.

Colour Gradients Gradients have been the graphic designing trend since 2017. Some designers say that gradients are the new colours while many others are already using a gradient for their mobile app design. Subtle grades of colour tone help designers to define the shapes and forms of UI elements. Your app will look more appealing and realistic if you incorporate gradients in your fintech UI design.

Vibrant Colours and Contrast Even though the use of vibrant colours & contrast is contradictory to muted colour pallets and gradients, a mixture of balanced vibrance and contrast is always welcome in the fintech app design. Vibrant colours help in element hierarchy in the mobile app screen; i.e. with a proper use of vibrant colours, the user will know which are the prominent part of the screen.

It will also distinguish the buttons and call to actions. Based on the psychological, behavioural patterns; these colours will stimulate the user to utilise the full potential of your app.

Font Fonts are equally crucial to your fintech app UI design as the colour pallets. The fintech apps need to use an easily readable font, as the fine print and texts are vital for making transactions.

Isometric Designs Especially in the fintech domain, keeping UI elements in the isometric perspective is a recent trend. The reason behind this increasing adoption of isometric UI design is that it adds to the app usability and improves UX. If used correctly, isometric designs help users to get quickly familiar with your app navigation and layout, which ultimately increases user retention.

Seamless Experience Irrespective of Device Type Again, data visualisation is one of the most critical challenges of fintech mobile app development. Showing large tables for investment reports, expense reports, etc. is very challenging for mobile screens. The designers should work along with the subject matter experts to correctly design layouts that can incorporate and visualise vast amounts of data.

The goal is to fit the data into any screen comfortably.

Few Examples of Astonishing Fintech Apps Mint

Mint is a budgeting app that allows users to manage their personal as well as their business finances. The users can simply add their bank accounts to the app, and the app will automatically sort the transactions into categories. The app is an excellent example of perfect data visualisation. The app is free to use, and it is safe to link your bank account with it.

Kickstarter

Ever since crowdfunding has become a popular source of investment for startups, Kickstarter has made strides to become one of the leaders in the market. The app uses minimalistic designs to avoid overwhelming users. The application has given investment opportunities to many people, which has drastically changed the way in which businesses start their operations.

Robinhood

Fintech businesses revolve around money, and having an app that can generate money for their users are gaining increasing popularity.. Investment apps like Robinhood empower the general public to invest in low-cost stocks in several areas of businesses. The app uses green and black colours which are vibrant. Still, the app looks impressive to use, and most of the users can’t stop using the app frequently. The cherry on the top is that the app doesn’t charge any commission for the investment made by the users.

Conclusion Designs are indeed very subjective, but there are common design trends that you can consider while designing your fintech app. Trends like minimalist designs, gradients, muted colour pallets are popular among customers, and the same trends should be reflected in your mobile app designs.

The principles discussed in the earlier part of the article should always be kept in mind.

Strictly implementing the principles while designing a fintech mobile app will always result in an app experience that is loved by users. I’ve also published an article on graphic designing trends for 2020, you can read it here: 11 Graphic Design Trends You Should Master In 2020.