How to Create a Money Transfer App Without Starting from Scratch?

With the way our society is moving, it is time for new money transfer apps to take over. The old-school methods of payment are outdated and leave a lot to be desired.

It has been said that there will be three types of mobile banking users: those who don’t use any form of digital payments at all, those who just pay with cash or debit/credit card without using their phone’s app, and third, clients who do use some form of digital payment. The future of money transfer apps looks bright, with society moving in the cash-free direction.

Why building a money transfer app is a viable idea

Great demand

$1.89 trillion – this is the valuation of the global P2P payment market as of 2021 according to the Precedent Research report. It is expected to reach around $9.87 trillion by 2030, making the money transferring apps market a lucrative niche to tap into.

With over 2.5 billion active users, mobile payments are becoming more popular than ever. Quick peer-to-peer money transfers offer a convenient and social way to send and receive money almost instantly. Although in 2022 the money transfer volume decreased due to the crisis caused by the Russian aggression in Ukraine, the high demand for quick digital payments that soared during the pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon.

Financial inclusion

Demand is not the only reason building an instant remittance app looks really promising. In fact, it might be the only way for the unbanked to receive access to financial services that are otherwise unavailable in certain countries and regions. According to Statista, 5 countries top the list of those with the largest percentage of the unbanked population: Morocco, Vietnam, Egypt, the Philippines, and Mexico.

Source: Statista.com

The list of countries where financial inclusion is insufficient is much longer, with about 1,7 billion people in total as of 2017, according to the World Bank. Therefore, it would be safe to assume peer-to-peer payment applications might be in demand, provided the population has access to smartphones and the Internet. 

What are the must-have features of a money transfer app?

A money transfer or a p2p payment app is a type of app that allows users to make payments to other people without having to use a bank or credit card. It also enables users to perform banking transactions via cashless payment methods and exchange currency.

Money transfer apps provide a variety of features that can be helpful for businesses and consumers. 

These apps help people with sending money to friends, family, or other contacts quickly and easily. 

They also offer the ability to pay bills, buy airtime, or make in-app purchases – everything to spare the users the necessity to use cash in their everyday lives or spend hours paying their bills in person.  The essential ones are as listed below.

Wallets

As mentioned above, an ewallet is the means for users to store their funds and bank data within the payment app, plus perform transactions. 

Bill payments

Another feature of a customer-centric money transfer application is the ability to handle phone top-ups, utility bill payments etc online in a few taps. Adding invoice scanning to this feature will make your application even more attractive to customers and help you gain a competitive advantage. 

Expense tracking

This feature adds value by helping users manage their finances more effectively. Basically, it means visualizing all transactions and grouping them by volume, status, location etc. This way, your customers get better UX and the chance to optimize their spending.  

Check this article to get more information about developing an app like PayPal.

International remittance

Remove the boundaries for your users and let them transfer money abroad or receive international money transfers in minutes, without delays and huge fees.  

Currency exchange

This feature will allow your potential users to send and receive different currencies, plus exchange currency between their accounts. 

Online ID checks 

Online ID checks are a common feature on money transfer apps because they protect both the sender and receiver. The sender can be sure that their information is being sent securely, and the recipient can avoid scams or fraudulent transactions. Money transfer apps with online ID checks also offer convenience for both parties – no need to meet in person or exchange phone numbers.

Multilingual interface

For startups, a single language interface might be enough, but at later stages, it is worth considering adding multiple languages to speed up product growth and expand worldwide.

Customer support

A decent customer support system typically includes live chat, email, or phone call support features. However, online chats are often the most frequent choice enabling customers to get the fastest support by asking a question in the in-app chat.

To get more information about key features of a future-ready payment app, check this article.

Important things to consider before developing a money transfer app

Aside from the development hurdles, there are a range of other factors you need to take care of when working (or entering) in the fintech industry. 

Regulatory compliance

Although a remittance app is not a banking institution (unless it’s a mobile banking app), it still is subject to certain regulations related to dealing with people’s finances. Moreover, the regulations vary between jurisdictions, so an app should match all fintech standards in every location it is going to operate.

How does the SDK.finance platform handle compliance issues?

SDK.finance platform complies with any potential regulations since it serves as a layer within a customer’s system and its usage can be customized according to the respective license. Besides, no data is stored within the system and the database is on the customer’s server, SDK.finance providing only backend app available at one of the cloud providers.

Security

Money transfer applications not only transfer funds but also report on transactions performed, so security is of primary importance for any application in the fintech niche. It is best to use strong data protection methods to maximize your customer’s money and data protection and prevent fraud. 

Some of the recommended measures to best secure your payment app development include:

• Two-factor authentication 
• Password change on a schedule.
• PCI DSS compliance (if you deal with cards)
• Use third-party identity verification services for anti-money laundering (AML) and “Know Your Customer” (KYC) procedures.
• Implement data encryption, session time limits, backups, and alerts.

How to create a money transfer app? Essential steps

Once you’ve decided the wire transfer app is your way to go and defined its market and type (i.e. a standalone P2P payment app, like PayPal or Zelle, a bank-centric app, which allows the bank’s customers access certain bank services 24/7), it’s time to move on to actually developing the app. 

1. Draw up product concept and key features

Above, we talked about the must-have features of an easiest money transfer app, but these are pretty generic. Your product will have its own feature set, stemming from its market needs, goals, available budget and team resources, etc.

So, creating a kind of PRD (product requirements document) for your app, specifying the necessary and nice-to-have features will make your further development steps much easier and more structured. 

2. Create UI/UX concept

At this stage, your designers can start working on the app’s interface concept, making sure it’s intuitive and user-friendly, plus ensuring compatibility with a variety of devices – like smartphones, tablets, and desktops. 

3. Choose a development approach

Once you understand the key functionality of your peer-to-peer transfers app, time to think about its implementation and development. We aren’t going to discuss the methodologies or tech stack here, but rather give you an idea of the key options for a money transfer app development. 

In-house development

If you have a strong team of developers with decent fintech experience, they can implement your product concept from scratch. Taking into account the complexity of compiling a team of 20+ professionals for a fintech project, it will be safe to assume this option is most viable for enterprise-level companies and hard to reach for smaller businesses. Check this article to get more information about in-house software development. 

Software development outsourcing 

For businesses lacking enough talent to develop a money transfer system in-house, there’s an option to outsource development to companies specializing in fintech development. In this case, a discovery phase results in a clear vision of the product in terms of its technological implementation, which the development team proceeds to bring to life. It is far from being a cheap option, and usually no less time-consuming than in-house development.

Read this article to get more information about starting a payment processing company.

Using a cloud-based SaaS fintech solution

Vendors like SDK.finance aim to bridge the gap between an initial product concept and a live application both in terms of budget and development time by providing a cloud-based API-driven transactional core to build finance products on. It comes with a bunch of benefits that help it stand out of the crowd and make it a viable alternative to more traditional solutions listed above.

What SDK.finance cloud-based payment platform has to offer?

• Release acceleration – SDK.finance platform acts as the development shortcut, so the customers’ teams don’t have to start from the ground up but rather can use the software as a backend platform for a payment app. This not only seriously saves the time for development, but also lets the team focus on tailoring its functionality, adding the necessary integrations and building extra features via API.

• Affordable price – the subscription-based payment model doesn’t require upfront investments in the infrastructure and opens the way for startup companies working on their MVPs, apart from SMBs and enterprises.

• No commitment – a hybrid cloud FinTech Platform by SDK.finance means a customer’s

Building a money transfer app on top of SDK.finance platform

The SDK.finance payment platform can provide a robust base for building different financial products such as a money transfer app, a digital wallet, a neobank or a payment acceptance service. With its stable  and seamless performance, this platform can serve as the backbone for your payment business needs and can be conveniently enhanced with integrations, without any restrictions.

Payment software by SDK.finance offers a wide functionality to build a standalone money transfer app on top or add electronic functionality to your existing product. Our platform provides user and system management, reporting, invoicing, onboarding, accounting and other features that allow you to control payment flow and provide your clients the functionality they are looking for. 

Set up the infrastructure and services

This critical step involves the meticulous configuration of various environments, including development, pre-production, and production, to ensure a seamless and streamlined development process. Additionally, it entails setting up essential services that will facilitate the deployment, monitoring, and maintenance of your money transfer platform.

Configure development, pre-production and production environments 

The SDK.finance infrastructure consists of three servers: developer instance (for developing and testing the software); production instance (server for live operations with end users and real-world operations); pre-production or Sandbox (infrastructure with the same specifications as the production instance, used for troubleshooting third-party component integration).

Requirements for production and test environments:

CPU – 1

RAM – 2 GB

SSD – 40 GB

OS: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Software: NGINX 1.14.0

To understand the existing features you can dive into each functionality component below and see how it works out of the box.

System configuration 

Creating roles, setting up commissions, creating wallets, currencies, contracts, setting up exchanging rates and permissions.

To start configuring SDK.finance money transfer software, you need to authorize yourself as an administrator via API. In the response, you will receive a token along with the parameters of the other users. The received token should be used to access other APIs. You can also save other parameters if needed.

Creation of currencies

Next, you can create any system currencies (real currencies or any objects to be counted in your fintech platform, such as points, coins, bonuses, etc.). First, you need to create an issuer, and the system will generate an ID that will be used in the use cases where currency specification is required.

Setting the exchange rates

To enable currency conversions within the money transfer system, exchange rates must be set. This can be done either by managing the exchange rates manually or by integrating a reliable third-party service.

For example, SDK.finance uses the powerful Currency Cloud service to maintain accurate and up-to-date exchange rates. See our knowledge base for more information on calculating exchange rates.

Configuring top-up and withdrawal

SDK.finance provides an implemented basic top-up and withdrawal flow that can be extended and customized based on our clients’ business needs. You can recharge via:

• bank transfer
• cash deposit
• third party providers

There is also a pre-developed flow for card top-up, which is available on UI, but will be fully functional only after integration with a specific third party provider covering this functionality.

It is possible for users easily withdraw money from their wallets via the methods enabled for their contract type:

– via an external provider (to the card, to a third-party provider, directly to the bank account, etc.)

– via bank transfer to the bank account

– via the cash register

In our knowledge base you can find more information about loading and withdrawing funds.

System management

By implementing system management, you can set the guidelines and rules for user conduct, and define the key services and functionalities that customers, including individuals and merchants, can access.

There are the following  functions are available within the money transfers management:

• contracts management 
• transaction control
• reports and analytics 
• currency exchange
• system users creation 
• payment gateway management

You can find more details about system management in our knowledge base.

Setting up contracts and commissions

By accessing the SDK.finance money transfer software, you can change or expand the preset contract types.

Four contract types are available by default:

• basic
• standard
• gold
• VIP

Each of them has a predefined setting or you can also create an individual contract.

Different types of commissions are available:

• fixed
• percentage
• zero

How to configure the commissions:

1. Select the start and end dates for the commission to be applied.
2. Configure the way the commission should be deducted (added or divided among users).
3. Then choose the commission status: active or inactive.

By implementing these configurations, you can effectively manage the commissions within your money transfers services, and ensure a smooth and streamlined user experience for your customers.

Customise the UI

SDK.finance provides a pre-built interface for administrators and a basic interface UI for end users, both of which can be customized.

You can access our open-source packages UI and have developers to customize both the administration area and the end-user front-end of the money transfer software to meet your business needs and reflect the unique requirements of the brand.​​

Third-party integrations

The type of integrations depend on business needs and necessary operations of the money transfer software. 

There are different types of third party providers:

You can also configure fees and limits for each provider and allow or disallow certain operations for a specific group of users. For more information about third-party integration, see our knowledge base.

How much time does it take to develop a money transfer app?

The main factors that affect the time it takes to develop a money transfer app are: the platform you use, the development tools, how much customization you require, whether you have an in-house team etc. 

Even if you choose a payment platform from a vendor like SDK.finance, which will cut down the time-to-launch, there’s no way one can estimate the approximate development time without knowing your specific product requirements and pre-requisites. 

Wrapping up

Once you’ve decided on your app’s needs, you can weigh all the pros and cons of different development possibilities and choose software vendors or outsourcing partners who will help you build a project roadmap that will take you from concept to launch.

P.S. Get in touch with us for expert consultation on how your project can be implemented on SDK.finance platform.