The rise of the global smartphone market already made the global mobile payment income cross 1 trillion USD in 2019. People are now getting more reliant on digital payment solutions instead of physical payments. The days of paper cash payment seem to go away with the increased adoption of digital technology. Plus, the global pandemic has also significantly contributed to this growth with lockdown and social distancing norms. In this blog, we are going to learn about mobile wallet app development.
Understanding an EWallet Mobile App
A mobile wallet application, EWallet, or a digital wallet is a fintech application that can digitally store money on smartphones or other gadgets. Whether an individual wants to make online payments, pay bills, or simply order food online, digital wallets have gained massive popularity to suffice these demands. These mobile wallet applications are commonly used by individuals, merchants, banks, and enterprises for digital payments.
Common Features of EWallets
- Transparent and secure transfer of funds with bank cards through phones or PCs
- Easier virtual money conversion into banking assets
- Easier payment at retail stores, online stores, travel sites, digital services, food, etc.
Different Types of Mobile Wallets
There are three types of apps created with ewallet mobile app development;
- Open
- Semi-closed
- Closed
Open Wallet
An open wallet is issued by a bank and can be accessed as a credit card to purchase products and services. It can also be used for withdrawing money from ATMs.
Semi-Closed Wallet
Semi-closed wallets can be used for making online or offline payments. These payments are conducted by partner stores that also support eWallet payment services.
Closed Wallet
Closed wallets are used by top companies for building client faithfulness and influencing customers to use the money to purchase goods or services provided by the issuer. Example; Amazon Wallet, Uber Wallet.
Why You Should Consider Mobile Wallet App Development?
Increase in Your Customer Base
Mobile Wallet apps have made online shopping a much easier and quicker experience. Now, the customers don’t even need to enter their card details while shopping as the integrated mobile wallets smoothen the transactions.
Improved Conversion Rate
People often build their online shopping cart but don’t actually buy the products. The long and tedious payment process makes the buyers make the payments and buy them. Integrating ewallets can drastically increase the conversion rate.
Easier Refunds
An online shopping site is expected to provide easier refunds to customers. The integration of ewallet applications also smoothens the refund process helping sellers to process refunds easily. This is helpful for both consumers and sellers.
Saves Time
Ewallets are convenient for the online shopping experiences and physical stores. It is much more convenient than using a credit or debit card in stores. By simply scanning a QR code, payments can be made almost instantaneously. Ultimately, this greatly saves time for the cashier and the customer.
Decrease in Fraudulent Activities
Credit/debit card technology is not that secure because cybercriminals are able to crack the passwords and OTPs. In contrast, e-wallets are more secure with encryption technologies. Plus, these wallets do not display account details directly.
Cost of Developing a Mobile Wallet App
A bare minimum mobile wallet application will cost around $80,000, while a complete mobile wallet application might cost $200,000 or even more. There are so many integrations and APIs going in the back-end of a mobile wallet app. This includes a lot of APIs, databases, core logic, and other operations. Lastly, there’s also the requirement to develop an admin panel to manage the application with ease.
Steps to Create a Mobile Wallet App
Designing and Prototyping
The first step in the development process is to find out the target audience and their pain points. Then you have to create prototypes of your wallet app considering these points. A prototype gives a fair idea of how the real users will be interacting with the application. You can also get some feedback from the stakeholders about your prototype to adjust your app screens, adding or removing functionalities.
Developing the Mobile Wallet
Once you have the prototype is ready, you have to start working with the real application. There are a few things that you should consider while developing a digital wallet;
Security
The mobile wallet application must be safe and secure with the best technologies. Follow these practices to strengthen the security of your ewallet;
- The use of tokenization while exchanging transactional data. The randomized tokens make it hard for hackers to crack critical information
- Enable two-factor authentication with a service like Twilio. This creates double protection for the mobile wallet application.
- Ensure strong data encryption
- Ensure that you comply with PCI
The Use of an Open-Ended Architecture
As a mobile app wallet creator, your ewallet should have an open architecture to allow external services to integrate with the application well. This will ensure that your app runs on a vibrant ecosystem, where more businesses want to connect with it. Tight integration with a payment gateway is also required to effectively process the transactions. In fact, you will find plenty of pluggable SDKs for payment services.
Integrating Third-Party Components
Any successful mobile app development project requires the integration of third-party components. There are so many plug-and-play SDKs in the market to improve the speed of the development project. However, it is recommended to these SDKs only for peripheral features since they might cause security concerns.
The Admin Dashboard
You will need to create an admin dashboard that will help the administrators to manage the users and their interactions with the application. However, it is possible to use a ready-made template for the admin panel to speed up the development process.
Testing
The testing stage is very important to find out the vulnerabilities in the code and ensure that every feature is working as expected. Ewallet app testing takes a lot of skill and expertise in mobile wallet development technologies.
Releasing the Mobile Wallet Application
Once you successfully developed the mobile wallet application and tested it properly. You have to publish and release the application on Apple App Store or Google Play Store. There are certain rules and guidelines that you have to follow for each respective application store.
Maintenance
The last step is to provide continuous support to the mobile wallet application. You also have to be aware of the consumer demands and improve the experience of the wallet based on user interaction and feedback.