Digital Banking Development

Enjoy the synergy of banking innovation, the flexibility of existing digital banking solutions, and ready-to-join teams with expertise in Fintech transformation.

What Is a Digital Bank?

Digital experience in customer-centric banking solutions available today is mainly built around card products that provide an array of corresponding financial services of the highest demand (card issuance, payments, transfers, crowdfunding, tax reporting).

This is often a startup that functions on its own or on the basis of the existing partner bank, has limited functionality compared to a conventional financial institution, and is basically a card product wrapped in an attractive front end. Nevertheless, some digital banking solutions do grow in time to extend loans and offer deposits or mortgages and other financial products.

In any case, regardless of the size of the business solution, customers get:

E-registration/KYC/onboarding

Omnichannel support (web, mobile, etc.)

Integration with third-party services to build a certain functionality

Possibility to manage the solution via a special panel (interface)

Retail Functionality

The following features are typical for the retail part of the digital banking platform. We perform regular monitoring of the trends and innovative financial projects around the world. Contact us to get more insights on more advanced functionality to enhance customer experience.

Basic

Onboarding & KYC

Account opening, login, e-registration

Accounts & Cards

Product information, operations with products, statements, limit management

Payments

Transfers (C2A, C2C, A2C), utility payments

ATM/ Geolocation

Nearest ATMs, offices

Advanced

PFM

Expense analysis, budgeting, financial goals

Loans & Deposits

Opening, statements, operations with products

Loyalty

Discounts and partners

My Friends

Financial operations with a selected group of people

Family Banking

Operations among family members, common financial goals

SMB and Corporate Functionality

We can add virtually any feature you'd like but the following ones are typical for SMB and corporate segments.

Basic

Accounts

Opening, account statements, transactions, payments, booking, etc.

General Information

Currency rates, ATMs and branches, company profile, settings, etc.

Payments

Payment orders, archive, cancellation, templates, regular payments, etc.

Currency Payments
and Control

Transit accounts, transaction pas- sports, automated control, OFAC, etc.

Payroll Project

Statements, import, payments, automated control, benefits, etc.

Corporate Cards

Business expenditures, purchasing services and materials, travel, etc.

Advanced

Loans & Deposits

Opening credit lines, information, statements, loan repayment, etc.

BFM

Budgeting, cash flow forecasting

Control of Branches/Subordinate Units

Multi-layer acceptance and signature, unified ID for several companies, unified view into financials

E-invoicing

Sending, receiving, management, and archiving of legally and digitally signed invoices

Unified Profile of Digital Banking Solutions

We may offer you the possibility to support several different customer profiles within one and the same account. For example, a user can be a private individual, an entrepreneur, a director of one company, and a deputy director at another.

Ecosystem as a Ticket to Quick Development

When approaching the development of the digital banking platform, we take into consideration that the solution should allow for easy and smooth integration of third-party services leading to its extended functionality.

Zhirko

Sergey Zhirko

Head of Fintech Cluster

“It is of utmost importance that your company clearly understands which steps will be included in the launch process of your digital banking solution — starting from the features to cover in the PoC and the MVP and how this service product will evolve further. The constant evolution of your solution is a key point here. We help our clients with generating the most effective roadmap to deliver the product into the market.”

Follow the White Rabbit

The evolution path of the digital experience service may vary depending on business goals. However, we recommend our clients rely on the following core milestones.

Digital Banking Vision

What to consider

  • Compulsory licensing
  • (Un)availability of the partner bank
  • Which solutions/products will be used for the core banking/card processing functionality (if there is no partner bank)
  • Who is the target group and how it affects the functionality and staging

Planning of Stages

What to do

  • Produce the functionality backlog for 1–2 years
  • Divide the functionality into stages (PoC, MVP, etc.)

Note: Do not punch above your weight by going for a wealth of functions. Many excellent digital banking solutions may simply not get off the ground if your customers have to wait way too long for them to go into production. You'd better deliver them in small portions.

PoC Development

The key task at this stage is to implement 2 or 3 vertical user operation scenarios, e.g. login, card list view, transfer between cards, etc. At the same time, you observe the integration design of all components involved (front end, core banking, card processing, authentication, and so on).

As a rule, the nature of the PoC is purely technical, so no end users are allowed to get access to it.

In addition, at this stage, as an established digital banking vendor, we advise financial institutions to create the CX/UX design of the future project.

MVP Development

Your goal here is that the minimum set of functions would go live. Then you test them via different digital channels and get feedback from real customers.
As the leading digital banking vendor, we recommend including at least the following functions:

  • Client KYC & onboarding (account opening + card)
  • Login/logout
  • My products (cards, accounts)
  • Transfers between products (C2A, C2C)
  • Payment integration (potentially — utility payments)
  • Account statements

Extra functions can be released at later stages.

Continuous Development
+ Ecosystem Creation

The development of digital banking software solutions is a constant process that is better off with regular releases of features so that your target users could see the growth. As an experienced innovation provider, we advise arranging the backlog and CI/CD processes.

As a rule, this task is under the supervision of the dedicated digital banking team. We surely can help you both with the implementation of digital banking projects and the subsequent handover of the developed online banking platform to your own team. Or, we can create a joint hybrid team to evolve your software in cooperation.

The second vital point here is the construction of the service ecosystem. You don't need to develop all services yourself — there are plenty of them already available. You'd better learn how to integrate engaging services into the digital bank's ecosystem for a fast extension of the functionality (e.g., accounting service for SMBs, personal/business finance management, etc).

Professional Team for Digital Banking Development

No need for individual staffing. We have already assembled, balanced, and focused engineering teams ready for onboarding.

At least 2 projects in common for every team member

Service Team (Micro-team) – group of engineers who already worked together and know how to do certain task/project.Service Team (Micro-team) – group of engineers who already worked together and know how to do certain task/project.

Established team process – task management, quality control, delivery of results, and so on

Ky-ky, я дропдаун

Team specialization and focus on certain task types

Ky-ky, я дропдаун

Existing business expertise for certain domains

Ky-ky, я дропдаун

Typical Team Structure for Digital Banking Development

Depending on the project conditions and limitations, the team structure and the number of team members may significantly vary. However, our engagement shows that the implementation of a middle-sized digital banking project requires the following team members:

1

Project Manager

4

Back-End
Developers

1

Product Owner

3

Front-End
Developers

3

System Analysts

4

Mobile Developers
(iOS + Android)

1

Technical Architect

3

QA Engineers

1

UI/UX Expert

1

DevOps Engineer

Our company may promptly send you a team profile for digital banking development. We expect to have a lot of questions requiring clarification.

How Much Does It Cost to Create a Digital Bank?

How Much Does It Cost to Create a Digital Bank?

Get the inclusive insights from our experts regarding how much financial institutions may pay for having a digital project developed.

How Does the Implementation Framework Look Like?

We know how to approach a digital banking project effectively, so we've implemented a set of modules and components as well as some typical architectures. From the technical angle, they ensure that all your scalability, maintainability, performance, and security requirements are met.

Also, we may arrange a white-label implementation of the business logic for a range of components which makes the project rollout faster and cuts risks.

Technical Perspective

From the technical perspective, the digital bank may be defined as a set of microservices (however, the microservice architecture is not a must-have here).

Services use the messaging integration style.

All services communicate internally via a message broker (Kafka, ActiveMQ, etc.).

Mobile and web clients communicate with services via an API gateway.

Mobile and web employ the REST communication style.

All services have a similar structure (by default) for technology consistency.

No heavyweight containers. Services are based on lightweight runtime (Spring Boot, MicroProfile, Micronaut, Quarkus, or similar).

Services are containerized (Docker).

Services have externalized configuration for easy staging.

Each service has its own database (scheme).

Personalized Digital Services

Personalized Digital Services

Using the Agile approach, we created a digital banking solution that united mobile and online banking. Thus we lessened the burden on retail banking branches and provided clients with more personalized services via smart analytics.

Target Technologies

As a global digital banking provider, we can use any tech from our expertise pool. However, for solutions used by banks and credit unions, we prefer those listed below.

Front End (Web)

React

Back End

Java, .NET, Scala, Go

Mobile

Swift, Kotlin, React Native

Middleware

RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, Kafka, Kubernetes, Docker, AWS, Azure

Database

PostgreSQL, MS SQL

More detailed info on the list of technologies is here.

Performance & Scalability Issues

The major advantages of the digital banking platform we offer are its effective horizontal and vertical scalability. Thanks to them we secure the conformity with the performance requirements in case the load on the system rises due to the upgrade of server hardware and the increase in the number of the server cluster nodes.

How We Ensure That the Requirements Are Met

To achieve the required number of users, we:

a. Apply clustering and load balancing technologies.
b. Employ a web framework efficient in resources.
c. Minimize the volume of session state data.
d. Utilize stateless components.
e. Effectively use the client state approach.
f. Minimize the volume of data sent with each request.
g. Use asynchronous operations and Java NIO to minimize time and server data flows.

To achieve the system response time, we:

a. Apply asynchronous operations.
b. Ensure effective data access.
c. Arrange caching at various levels (data access, integration, UI).

Hosting for Digital Banking Solutions

To put it simply, there are two secure options:

on-premises installation

cloud-based deployment

We can go over both alternatives for you depending on the demands of your digital banking platform. As one of the global online banking software providers, our company suggests considering the following factors:

Preferable service-level agreement
(SLA)

Service scaling prognosis (increase in the number of users or operations)

Security requirements

Inhouse resources and expertise in deployment and system support

Available hardware resources

Planned staging configuration and CI/CD aspects

How We Ensure Secure Customer Experience

Our Approach

We are pragmatic.

Safety and security measures must be cost-effective and coordinated with the cost of the property to be protected or the amount of damage that can be caused.

We analyze threats and address them.

We identify possible threats to the systems and platforms of our customers and devise countermeasures to address those that are worth our attention.

We stick to industry standards.

We do not reinvent the wheel for our customers and use recognized and tested solutions. Some new commercial platform may seem attractive but we opt for reliability.

Regular Sync-ups with All Product Teams

We prefer to integrate with the solutions used by the customer or products from recognized vendors instead of enforcing our own digital banking solution.

We adapt to the bank's security requirements.

Surely we provide our insights to banks and credit unions but we never impose them. It's the customer who makes the final say.

Measures We Take

  • Traffic via HTTPS connectivity
  • Protection against most common threats
    (XSS, CSRF, SQL injection)
  • Support of the most common cryptographic providers
  • No storage of confidential data on the client side
  • Data audit and logging (system events, user request log, client app events)
  • Integration of the EDS (electronic digital signature)
  • Multi-factor authentication (login/password, OTP, SMS, MAC)
  • Reauthentication upon request
  • User session timeout

Some More Tricks for Digital Banking Development

Just like with any other type of software, to build a user-friendly payment solution, you need to be aware of all its traps and industry best practices. Rest assured that we are experts in this sphere and deliver only top systems to our clients.

Omnichannel Support

You should build your solution with the omnichannel approach in mind, although this functionality may seem unnecessary to you at the initial stage. This will save you time and money in the future.

Quick Time-to-Market

It is of essential importance to introduce transformation and related changes into the production environment asap. So choose the project architecture and processes that allow it.

Reuse of Cloud Modules

Such platforms as AWS or Azure come with a range of ready-to-use technical modules that can be used in online banking development. This is a good option to consider to speed up the project.

Administration Interface

No matter what, you will need an interface for the service provider, administrators, content managers, and so on. We advise considering these options as a must in the backlog and include them at the MVP stage.

Contacts

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Call us at +44 151 528 8015
E-mail us at request@qulix.com

Thank you!

Thank you for contacting us!
We'll be in touch shortly.

Go back to the home page

Feel free to get in touch with us! Use this contact form for an ASAP response.

Call us at +44 151 528 8015
E-mail us at request@qulix.com