Be it any economy or industry, finance plays a significant role.
A technology-driven approach is required to boost financial activities. Here comes the role of a FinTech mobile application.
FinTech mobile apps can help improve traditional financial methods for effectively delivering financial services.
Since FinTech apps deal with susceptible data, their security must be the top priority.
Therefore, it is necessary to take care of security while developing FinTech mobile apps.
Ensuring your FinTech mobile app security will require your app developer to take care of a few things during development.
In this blog post, I have shared eight ways for your app developer to build a secure FinTech mobile app for you.
Let’s dive in.
#1 Writing secure codes
Writing secure codes is the first step to building any FinTech mobile app.
Below are some of the things that your app developer must take care of:
- Input validation
- Review the data that’s being sent to external networks.
- Allow access to only the most essential app functions.
- Define clear access rules.
- Ensure the protection of sensitive data.
- Protecting codes from SQL injections
#2 Secure insfrastructure
The infrastructure on which your FinTech mobile app would run must be secure.
If you run your apps on the cloud, you must select a cloud vendor, such as AWS, that complies with the required security standards.
Before choosing a cloud vendor, make sure that they provide you with the following benefits:
- Security against massive DDOS attacks.
- Fast disaster recovery in case of disruptions.
#3 Testing the app
Testing your FinTech mobile app is perhaps the most essential and integrated part of the app development process.
One of the best ways to test a mobile app is through ‘Penetration Testing,’ which means running your own attacks to detect the app’s vulnerabilities.
If required, you may also consider hiring app testers to do this job.
But most of the time, your mobile app developers can also help you to test your app by the below testing phases:
- Requirements gathering & planning
- Identify testing types
- Test case & script design
- Manual testing
- Automated testing
- Usability testing
- Beta testing
- Performance testing
- Security & compliance testing
#4 Web server security
Even if your FinTech mobile app doesn’t need a website, you will still need web services to create APIs and integrate them with your apps. And to host your web services, you do need a web server.
Ensuring the security of your web server is another essential aspect of developing your FinTech app.
Using a VPN server can help help you to host your codes securely.
Also, taking care of the SSL certificate can ensure the encryption of all the data on your server.
Perhaps you can consult your app developer to shortlist & select an appropriate server to host your web services.
#5 API security
APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) could be an integral part of your FinTech mobile app, allowing you to interact with the application’s backend.
APIs are also regular attack targets. Therefore, ensuring their security is another essential measure to secure your FinTech app.
How can your app developer secure the APIs?
Well, your mobile app builder can introduce an automatic API token rotation.
He can also provide identification, authentication, and authorization for accessing API.
#6 Data encryption
To secure your Fintech mobile app, you could also use data encryption for users’ personal data such as name, address, ID, etc.
Especially if your app requires users to input their financial data, such as credit card numbers or other such information, data encryption technique becomes even more important.
What does encryption do?
Encryption protects data during transmission, a phase when it’s highly vulnerable and can be easily intercepted.
Using various encryption algorithms, your app developer can secure the data transmission.
#7 Payment blocking feature
If you use PayPal, you probably know what I mean. Has this happened to you ever? When you receive a huge amount of money in your PayPal account, your money is put on hold for a few days or weeks.
Yes, you can apply the same technique to your FinTech app. This step will even make your app more secure.
If you notice suspicious or irregular activity in any of your users’ accounts, you can block the payment and further investigate or demand clarification from the respective users.
#8 Authentication & authorisation
How does authentication work?
The authentication system serves as a barrier to any suspicious activity.
Authentication may include combining the password with SMS verification or other verification methods, such as retina scans.
Combining different authentication methods for your users to log in makes your mobile app more secure.
For authorization, your app developer can ensure your users can perform specific tasks.
Ideally, the user rights & permissions should be reduced to a limited set of actions and commands.
