In the Western world, digital banking hasn’t yet overcome traditional financial institutions. In the east, it’s a little bit different. Many countries had no financial institutions that everyday people could use for managing their money, making savings, and paying for things. Thanks to the ubiquity of mobile devices, this has changed drastically. Now, countries like China and India are at the forefront of FinTech innovation and the switch to digital currency.

Our reality is a bit different. Industry incumbents don’t give up easily, and all of the major finance companies have stepped foot into the digital world with different types of services. Startup founders can either go against them, or work with them in order to usher in a new era of finance.

The finance industry has evolved so fast that regulators aren’t quite keeping up with it. Blockchain and cryptocurrency are technologies that are still very misunderstood, and just two examples of many areas in finance that are ripe with scammers and bad actors. Which is why one of the big challenges in FinTech is building trust, and this starts with reliable technology.

You can’t have downtime or random bugs in FinTech software. You can’t have a hard-to-navigate design. Pristine user experience and an extremely secure backend are pretty much basic requirements in this industry. This makes FinTech software development much more difficult compared to many other industries. Put compliance requirements on top of that, and you’ve got a recipe for a difficult project.

It’s hard to say exactly if you should stick to older technology or use bleeding edge tech only. The best answer is probably a mix of both.

Some major companies still use extremely outdated programming languages like COBOL. These legacy infrastructures are extremely hard to rebuild so it’s understandable that they don’t see the need to switch, especially if it still works well. However, these issues don’t exist in new projects where you’re building something from the ground up, so it wouldn’t make sense to rely on such outdated technology.

Blockchain is by its very definition a bleeding edge technology, and many people promise it will change the world. However, public trust still isn’t there yet, the technology is at the stage of early adoption. Implementing a blockchain-only database could be a recipe for disaster, even though the technology is hyped up to be more secure than a conventional database.

Ultimately, the best mix for starting up or growing FinTech companies is somewhere in between bleeding-edge and tried & tested technology.

Maintaining good PR is a big part of competing in the FinTech market, and this starts with reliable technology and solid design. People don’t want to see dark design patterns in FinTech, nor irresponsible software development practices that cause bugs and crashes. Your software needs to be reliable, foolproof, secure, and easy to use.  

If you’re looking for a technology provider to join your FinTech project, contact us and tell us what you need.