Nowadays, most people do not carry physical cash with them, instead of that, they use a credit card, digital wallet, and payment apps. Mobile payment apps such as Venmo, Paypal, have made people addicted to digital payments in the last two decades. Among various mobile payment apps, Peer 2 Peer apps have been very popular among consumers. P2P payment apps are successful because they enable users to send money to your family, friends, and other known persons without visiting your bank. Simpalm is a top app development company in Virginia, and has developed several payment apps. If you have an idea of the payment app, then we can help you to implement the following steps. You can convert your payment app idea into a successful reality, like Venom, Paypal, and other apps.
What Are The Different Types of P2P Mobile App
The P2P payment apps provide users with a fast and secure way to transfer payment from one person to another person. These apps create a link between the sender’s bank/credit card account and the receiver’s bank account/credit card account. The various types of businesses have created a different peer to peer apps, based upon their business models. Following are the types of business models for P2P mobile apps:
1) Created by Banks
Banks are developing their payment apps enabling their users to transact and manage their bank accounts without visiting their branch. Dwolla, Zelle, PopMoney, clearXchange, are some examples. The app provides users with direct access to their bank account. They can deposit and withdraw money from their accounts. Users can send money directly from their bank accounts to anyone else’s bank accounts.
2) Created by Financial Institutions
PayPal, Venmo, Square Cash, Alipay, Paytm, M-Pesa are some examples of the financial institution payment app. These apps are not built by banks, but they are developed by big companies with an approved status of financial institutions. These are money transfer apps, users can transfer money from their credit card/bank account to other’s credit card/bank accounts. You can use these apps to transfer money for personal transactions, as well as for business transactions.
The social media apps have leveraged their popularity and user base to build payment transfer features as well. WeChat, Square Cash, Snapchat, are some examples of P2P payment features within a social platform. Users can transfer money with their friends, family, and other people, who are using the same social media platform. They reward you in the form of cashback and coupons when you pay or receive money using their social media payment apps.
4) Created by Phone Networks
The phone network companies have also been providing P2P payment apps for a long time. This model is not available in North America or Europe as they are more popular in countries, such as Asia and Africa. Users not only can send and receive money but also can pay utility bills and other payments. Idea Pay, Airtel money, Jio money are some examples. These apps do not require high authentication at the time of transaction.
5) Created by OS/Device Manufacturer
The mobile companies have also developed their payment app. The users having a similar device can transfer money as Apple users can pair with Apple devices. Apple pay, Google pay, Samsung pay are some examples. You can make very secure transactions with these options as the apps are protected with the device passwords. These apps stores the user’s account details and debit/credit card details that eliminate the re-entering procedure.
Common Features for P2P Mobile Payment App
The payment app features make the app different from that of the competitors. Therefore, while developing your payment app, you should focus on building unique features based upon your target audience. You should try to adopt simple and unique features rather than going with the complex and repeat features. Simpalm is a leading app development company in DC, and you can contact us to learn about the latest app features. Since you are developing a payment app like Venmo, Paypal, you should be aware of some common features that need to be enabled in a mobile payment app.
1) User Authentication
You need to make sure that people who sign up for your app are authentic, and they are not on your platform to do fraud. This task you can perform by verifying the user with their pictures, driver’s license, bank accounts, and phone numbers. You can also use their IP address and geolocation to make sure that the users are locating where they claim to be.
2) Two Way Authentication
Since you will be building a payment app for users to send money, implementing two-way authentication is very important. You want to make sure no fraud happens using your platform. One example of two-way authentication is OTP (One time password). In this case, the sender receives an OTP in their mobile phone when the sender initiates the money transfer. The two-way authentication makes sure that the sender double confirms the initiation of money transfer.
3) Use of QR Code
If you are transferring money to a business where you will be physically present, you can use the QR code feature. Businesses who will be receiving the money can generate a unique QR code that they can place at the location for direct payment. The sender can scan the QR code and send the money. The payment process will validate that the receiver and senders are both in agreement to send the money and are physically present.
4)Transaction History
The payment app allows its users to track the amount spent by them within the specified time frame. Your Payment app should show users monthly, weekly, and everyday transactions made using your app. These records can help to track your transaction and help you to budget your expenses.
5) Ability to pay Bills
You can add features in your app to pay bills, such as utility bills, credit card bills, and others. You will have to integrate your platform with utility companies and credit card companies to make this feature available. These features can be a great add on for your mobile payment app.
Select The Payment Gateways
Now, when you have featured your payment app, you should focus on selecting the payment gateway. There are several payment gateways available in each Country. In the USA, popular gateways are Stripe, Braintree, Authorize.net. Processors like Firstdata, Forte Payment, Global payments also provide their gateways. In Asia, popular gateways are CCAvenue, E-Billing solution, Direct pay, PayUmoney. While selecting payment gateways for your payment app, you should evaluate the security features, fees, popularity, and ease of integration. You should reach out to different gateway providers and analyze what they provide. For example, stripe has a unique feature that allows you to hold the money for a few days before sending it to the receiver. Venmo and Paypal payment apps make it easy for you to transfer money to someone who has also had a Paypal and Venmo account.
Understand the Regulations and Compliance
PCI compliance is a set of rules and regulations established for the payment app. The goal of compliance is to create a secure payment gateway for users. Your payment app needs to be PCI compliant before you launch it on the app store. A PCI compliant payment app provides the confidence to the user that their bank account details will be secure, and users can make a secure online transaction. The PCI compliance is administered at different levels and every level has its different claims depending upon the size of your business. They check the authenticity of the payment app. They bond the payment apps to provide an updated Antivirus security to safeguard the confidential information of their users. The PCI compliance can cost you around $1000 to $40,000 depending upon the size of your business. You also need to comply with the general banking regulation to protect your app from being involved in any money laundering activities.
Know Your Customer (KYC)
You should know your customer before they start transacting using your Payment app. You have to ensure that your app and its users are not involved in any money laundering or fraudulent activities. There is a need for basic compliance (rules and regulations) for opening an account in your payment apps, such as Name, Address, Identification number, bank details, and other details. The verification procedure for the KYC norms should be simple and effective so that the users’ important details can be covered. The app must allow its users to get the verification done by themselves that can be done by uploading the scanned copy of their certified documents.
Research About Your Competitors
Researching your competitors will provide you with an idea about the impact of their app on the market. While investigating your competitors, you will identify the key factors that strengthen and weakens their payment apps. You can adopt those features in your app for strength and take the necessary steps to avoid those weaknesses. The essential steps were taken by your competitors for survival in the app industry. The different features introduced by your competitors from time to time in their apps can also be identified. Based on your investigation, you can compare your payment app with that of others and discover the drawback in your app. You can initiate steps to overcome those drawbacks and make your app more appealing. The key factors that require more attention can be discovered and you can work on those factors to attract more users to your app.
Hire a Team with the Mobile Payment App Experience
After developing the outlay for your payment app, you need to hire fintech app development company for its execution similar to Venmo and Paypal payment app. You have various options: you can hire a development team or you can hire a freelancer. They both come with their benefits; the development team can be more costly, but professional freelancers can be less expensive but unpredictable. You should also decide the location of your team, whether it should be in the USA or Europe or Asia.
An offshore development team can be less costly as compared to hiring an onshore development team. You can outsource the development work to countries like India, Ukraine, Russia with a good pool of talent. You can consult with your friends, family, and other unknown people if they have conducted any app development. They can also provide you with the lead of the development companies on whom you can rely. Before hiring a development company, you should conduct a detailed investigation of the past and present projects of the development team. You can also conduct serve to collect feedback from their clients to judge the effectiveness of your work.
Design, Develop and Launch
Launching a full updated version app will take time as you need to first design the app, then develop and test it. Once you have finalized the key features of your payment app, you proceed with creating a user engaging designs for your app. Creating an attractive design for your app may take around 6 to 8 weeks. Before you design your p2p payment app, you should research the trend and updated designs in the app industry. The unique design will provide your app with a distinct appearance that will be different from your competitor apps.
Once the designing is done, your team can start developing your payment app. The development time might take from 2-4 months depending upon the size of your app. You want to make sure that the app is developed in sprints or milestones to track the progress. You should test the app after the end of each milestone/sprint. This will enable you to take the necessary steps to fix the bugs if you discover them in your app. You should focus on developing an MVP instead of a full-blown product. This will allow you to get into the market soon and get feedback from the users. Their feedback and reviews can be positive as well as negative. Based on the feedback of the initial users of your P2P payment app, you can customize your app to make it more appealing. After the modification, you can launch your fully-featured P2P payment app on the app stores. We are Chicago’s top mobile app developers, developing and launching mobile apps since 2009. You can contact us to Design, Develop and Launch a mobile app.
Market your App
Developing an app is not enough, you need to market the app to get the traction. You need to make your targeted audience aware of your app. With the help of the marketing techniques, you can make your app a success by reaching your targeted audience. There are different marketing techniques available that are effective in attracting more users, such as SEO marketing, Social media marketing, Email marketing, and others. To check the effectiveness of your marketing technique, you can conduct KPIs (key performance indicator) analysis. In KPI analysis, you should consider factors such as app downloads, user reviews, daily active users, retention rates. You can hire an in-house marketing team or outsource marketing work to an experienced marketing company.
Support and Enhance
When your app is running successfully, it is essential to get feedback from the users. Their feedback will help you to improve your P2P payment app. Based on their feedback, you can make modifications to the existing features of your app. It is necessary to make continuous changes in your app if you want to survive in the competitive market. You can enhance your app by tracking the defects and errors in your P2P payment app. You should conduct the proper testing of your app to check that the updated version is working properly.
