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Thus, an investment app solution has become an excellent option to make money off your savings straight from the coach.

For example, Robinhood, a commission-free stock trading and investment application launched in 2015, has gained impressive popularity in the investment industry. The startup has over 22.5 million annual users, being a primary trading platform for over 15 million.

The impressive success of the Robinhood investment platform has uncovered a huge demand for such apps. Intermediary firms, brokerage and dealer companies, as well as individuals ready to get started on the stock market, are interested in them.

So if you are considering building a trading platform, now is the right time to enter the investment app market. In this blog post, Devox Software will describe how to create an investment app, explaining the development specifics, basic features, and overall cost of such a project based on our extensive experience.

Investment Software Market Overview

The first step to consider before launching an app for any niche is evaluating its market potential. Fortunately, the investment sector has only started expanding on the mobile application market, thus offering a plethora of opportunities to trailblazers. 

Here is a comprehensive investment software market recap:

  • According to Future Market Insights, the value of the stock trading app market is estimated at $13.6 in 2022. By 2032, the figure is expected to reach $89.8 billion, growing at an impressive CAGR of 20.8%.
  • The top 3 popular stock trading startups – Robinhood, eToro, and Plus500 – have generated total revenues of $3.76 billion for 2021. 
  • An impressive 137.1 million investors were using stock trading apps in 2021, the Business of Apps research states.
  • The highest stock valuation of an investment application in 2021 was estimated at $8.8 billion (eToro). 

Today, the top stock trading and investment market players are Robinhood, Cash App, eToro, Revolut, WeBull, Plus500, Trading 212, Freetrade, and the Trade Republic. But what if your project becomes the game-changer that will easily outperform its competitors? At Devox Software, we’re always ready to help you make that happen!

Need expert advice or assistance? Book a call with one of our technical specialists today! Book a Call

What are the Types of Investment Apps

Currently, there are hundreds of investment applications offering advanced market insights and significant revenues. Overall, these applications fall into three major categories:

Don’t hesitate to analyze each segment to identify the one that will better fit your business goals and needs.

Basic Features of Investment Platforms

Once you’ve decided to create trading platform, it’s essential to have a basic awareness of the market trends and major needs of your potential investors. However, functionality is another critical aspect that can’t be missed when considering such a project. 

Getting an overall idea of which features to cover in your investment platform will help you to get a better grasp of the project’s budget and delivery time. Also, you will be able to decide which experts are required for its successful implementation. Some of the must-have features to include in an investment application are listed below.

Transaction Management

The stock market investment solution should provide clients with intuitive functionality and tools for convenient transactions and investment management.

Advanced Analytics

With advanced data visualization methods, automatic dashboards will provide your users with plenty of valuable insights and useful information for profitable stock trading and management.

KYC/AML Integration

The investment application should be designed with a deep focus on your audience. Typically, such software is oriented on Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) fintech security requirements.

Investment Calculators

An advanced category of tools that significantly contributes to the investor’s decision-making. Clients will have a better grasp of investment forecasting and goals, pick the right time for a deposit, and determine the frequency of contributions and possible risks. 

Bank Integration

Finally, make sure your investment application supports various payment options, including standard banking solutions (MasterCard, Visa), digital wallets (PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.), and cryptocurrency wallets. Also, such integrations allow investment platform managers to get full information about the client’s credit score and reliability, basically setting the ground for further investment decisions.

Most Popular Trading Apps Examples

Earlier, we discussed the functionality of investment app solutions, and now let’s review some of the top-rated tools for investment and stock trading. Learning the strong and weak points of each will surely come in handy for launching a custom investment solution in your upcoming project.

  • Robinhood. With almost ten years of presence in the fintech app market, this application was the first to introduce commission-free trading. Some of the most prominent features are its user-friendly interface, trading cryptocurrency, and fractional shares. Nevertheless, the major problems clients report are low-quality customer service, no support for retirement accounts, and inability to invest in funds or bonds.
  • Acorns. The key feature of Acorns is its accessibility to novice traders and investors, introduced in advanced optimization of fund management. The application leverages user data (age, risk tolerance, income, etc.) to help make the most profitable decisions. Acorns has an option for automatic investments and requires only $5 to get started, which makes it an excellent choice for a majority of new players. However, Acorns has monthly fees for portfolio management and doesn’t provide information about the tax strategy. These are believed to be the most notable drawbacks of this app.
  • TD Ameritrade. Along with cross-platform support and high personalization, Ameritrade has many tools to ensure a smooth investment and stock management for both experienced traders and newcomers. This platform offers free market research tools and excellent customer support, which allows you to get into the industry easily. Still, a great reputation allows Ameritrade to set high commissions and margin rates, which can become a serious drawback for traders.

As you can see, launching an app implies thorough planning of different aspects, including the features and tools, service plans, account management options, and many other things which make the app valuable and competitive. 

Now that you’ve learned the specifics of investment application solutions, it’s time to dive into the peculiarities of your future trading application development project!

A Comprehensive Guide to Investment Application Development

So far, we’ve already shed some light on how to create an investment platform. Here, we’ll cover the step-by-step approach to building a custom trading application for the investment and stock industry.

Market Research

First of all, it’s essential to study the current market trends, paying attention to the needs of the target audience. This will help to see the project’s value and relevance in the long-term perspective. 

Additionally, comprehensive market research gives a great chance to improve the product’s functionality through competitor analysis. You’d want your app to leverage the advantages of the existing trading platforms while avoiding their drawbacks.

Business Analysis

The next important stage is the business analysis with a focus on your project’s details. Here, project managers and analysts will review the business goals and needs, revealing how to deliver the highest value to your business through the upcoming project development. 

The end goal of these processes is to develop a powerful strategy for your stock trading platform development.

Application Design

Based on the information about your business and the target audience, the professional development team will start working on the app design and first prototyping models. This is a complex process that requires collaboration between designers, researchers, engineers, and a product manager. The previous stage’s findings transform into the first MVP models. 

Product Development

Once the design solutions are approved, the developers start doing the full-scale coding process. Typically, developers apply the Agile development model, which allows them to speed up the delivery without sacrificing the application’s security or performance. 

During the development process, engineers also double-check the code to ensure it’s properly functioning. The app should be supported by all the required devices, fully debugged, and ready for deployment. It’s important to test the final version in the real environment to make sure that everything works as planned.

Post-Launch App Support

After the app’s official release, the clients’ feedback may urge you to implement some improvements or add new functionality. Reputable web development service providers will help you with that. Also, on rare occasions when bugs are discovered, developers will fix them to ensure smooth performance and advanced usability. 

How to Monetize an Investment Application

Recurring revenue is one of the most important factors for any business, and the stock market sphere is not an exception. Here are some tips on how you can monetize the mobile application to get the highest project development ROIs. 

  • Provide free and premium app versions. This is one of the most commonly used marketing strategies, which implies developing a free version (usually monetized with in-app advertising) and paid option (ad-free, which can also include some advanced features)
  • Cover the in-app purchases in your free app. Users get access to the extra paid features to enhance the functionality and user experience of the investment app. 
  • Offer subscriptions. This way of providing advanced functionality to investors is an excellent strategy to generate recurring revenue. The users pay to have access to the advanced tools and comprehensive benefits. 
  • Invest in the paid app model. Apart from the in-app monetization, you can also offer a premium investment and stock trading platform. However, to use this strategy, you should be absolutely sure the application offers a unique value proposition and excellent user experience. 
  • Look for potential sponsorship. With this strategy, business owners can easily expand their target audience by reaching out to other user segments from the relevant fields. 

Using the right monetization approach can maximize your revenues. Nevertheless, to make it work out, it’s also essential to improve user experience, search for ways to attract new users, and improve their loyalty. 

With all the planning and development aspects considered, you may wonder about the overall price of launching a trading application. Let’s consider it in the next section.

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How Much Does It Cost to Make an Investment App?

The cost of developing a custom trading platform may vary. Typically, it will be somewhere between $100,000 and $150,00 for an MVP alone. Below is the approximate pricing for each stage of a stock market app development:

In most cases, the total price for the stock market app development reflects the number and complexity of the functions, due dates, testing specifics, and customization, as well as the expertise of the hired developers. 

At Devox Software, we understand how important it is to pick the right options for a specific project. That is why we provide an individual approach to ensure our clients get functional investment applications that fit their budgets. 

So, to get an accurate estimate of the trading application development cost for your project, feel free to contact our web development experts!

Create Your Best Trading Platform with Devox Software

Launching a brokerage application is a complex process that covers a variety of aspects: from market research and knowledge of the latest stock trends to application development and interface design. A properly-built app will have a large ROI and become a reliable source of recurring revenue. 

At Devox Software, we know how important it is to plan every app development stage to ensure excellent performance and high profitability. So, once you’ve decided to hire a dedicated team of developers to build a brokerage app – feel free to reach out to us. 

So far, Devox Software has successfully completed multiple projects in this sphere. You can learn about some of them from our portfolio. Our web development team is continually tracking the latest trends in the stock market development niche to provide the best solutions.

Interested in launching your project at Devox Software? Contact us right away to build a trading platform that will boost your business!