Fintech project development is quite a complicated task: high load services and special requirements to security are just a few problems IT specialists meet working on finance-related projects. So, the contractor you choose should have proven experience in the niche. It’s not enough for them to write high quality code—there are many factors you should note before hiring a developer team.

At Surf, we have been developing web and mobile apps for fintech projects since 2011. Today, we are among the 20 Top Fintech Software Development Companies, according to DesignRush. 

Our DesignRush profile awards

In this article we’ll describe the challenges a developer team meets in fintech and talk about the skills necessary to overcome them. Having read it, you will learn how to choose a Go development company for creating a fintech app. 

6 challenges of fintech software development 

Thousands simultaneous users

and high load problems

The more users a service has, the higher are the technical requirements for it. As in fintech projects the number of users is constantly growing, and services working slowly can increase the risk of losing customers, scalability becomes vital. And the programming language your developers use can help meet the requirements. If you choose a proper language for a fintech project, it’ll be quite easy to implement changes related to growing loads. 

Golang is a great choice for creating fintech apps due to the scalability it provides. With goroutines, a lightweight and cheap analogue of green threads, the Go developer team you hire can easily expand the system, doing parallel and asynchronous work. As a result, memory usage becomes more effective. For businesses it means a great opportunity to save time and money and retain customers due to services working uninterruptedly.  

Wrapping it up, if a programming language you prefer isn’t the best fit for fintech software development, using it becomes one more problem. Endless searching for new solutions and testing them turns into a headache for developers and causes wasted resources. 

📍Tip: Before starting the project, discuss with the developer team you hire the language to choose and other ways to make a system perform in the most efficient way even under the growing loads.

At Surf, we have more than once worked on the projects where large fintech companies need up-to-date apps convenient for their numerous users, including small and medium-sized businesses, representatives of corporations and holdings, and other customers with demanding requirements. 

One of our products is a financial app for the first neobank of Pakistan. Their target audience is millennials, being the most tech-savvy users.Our main tasks were to develop user-friendly and innovative banking services aimed for future growth. 

To make the system easily maintainable, we put together and handed over to the Client’s team the detailed documentation, including the backlog and design for the features we only planned to implement, QA  tests and documentation, and knowledge base. This is our general approach, that allows clients to onboard new in-house team members fast and keep upgrading the product in a streamlined and consistent way. Read the full story to find out more about the solutions we chose and the results.

Industry-specific responsibility

and high performance requirements 

Excellent performance becomes a must when we speak about high loads, especially when it is a fintech software. No room for error, numerous system requirements, and other challenges you meet while building and supporting it imply that your developers need efficient tooling. And a programming language can be one of such tools.

For example, compiled programming languages have higher execution speeds than interpreted ones, because they don’t take an extra step before code execution: a virtual machine isn’t needed for it. Golang, C, C# belong to the group of compiled programming languages, and that’s why code execution is faster when developers use them. 

However, being a compiled language is not the only reason that makes Go so performant. In addition, Go has low RAM consumption, very good CPU utilization, and an extremely efficient mechanism of multithreading. 

📍Tip: There is no universal solution for all the fintech projects. But the development team you hire should be experienced enough to give you a piece of advice in terms of industry best practices that helps your business grow.

To say some words about famous fintech startups experience, American Express found a solution to get a higher code execution speed and performance: they chose Golang for payments and rewards networks and microservices development. Having conducted their own programming languages test, they found out that using Golang they had a performance of 140,000 requests per second. 

Besides, Go’s attractive tools and features made it win over С++, Java, and Node.js used earlier at the fintech company. Read more about Go development cases in fintechs in our article.

Highly competitive market 

and extra need in fast development

This is one more challenge developers meet while developing fintech software. When IT specialists have to release new features, implement changes, and test them often and fast, details become very important. 

The programming language simplicity is one of the details. If code is easy to write and to read, developers need less time  while developing new features. Besides, they detect mistakes much faster and at an earlier stage than with other languages, so features are created, tested, and released fast. It helps businesses be on top of things, be ahead of competitors, attract new users, and retain the current ones. 

Golang is an easy language. Experienced developers master it for several weeks and immediately start using it at work. So, it’s the perfect choice for a fintech project. 

📍Tip: It’s a reasonable approach to study the confirmed case studies a vendor has implemented  before your project. The vendor’s previous successful experience with similar solutions can contribute to your competitive advantage in the constantly changing fintech industry.

At Surf, we have built many fintech apps for popular fintech companies. And we know how to implement various ideas: regularly updated interface, fast payment processing, or even online-games development for a banking app. 

This was the case with a concept of an app for kids and their parents that we created. We added games that help acquire new knowledge about finances, funny virtual assistants, exciting learning activities. To learn more about the IT solutions we offer for such an app, read our case studies. 

User retention issues 

and high cost of errors

In fintech projects any error can cost much and lead to malfunctions, wrong calculations, users losing their money and trust in a company, and changing it for another one. It’s difficult to overestimate what a destructive impact  these things may have on business. 

From this point of view, the Go developer team you hire has an advantage over those who choose other languages: Go’s simplicity helps concentrate on the technical side of development, not on the language itself. So developers are more likely to detect and correct mistakes early enough to prevent users from experiencing problems. 

The second thing that’s very important in the context of risk prevention is testing. A reasonable combination of manual and automated tests allows early detection of  bugs and errors, saving your time, and protecting your users from troubles.

📍Tip: Make sure that the Go developer company you choose to create your fintech app has  proven experience in testing. Before you start a project with them, ask about their QA team, and tests they perform, the devices they use and approaches they apply.

Top level of security is a must

and need in strong technical solutions to provide it

Fintech projects are a prime target for cyber attacks. There are various factors that can make a product vulnerable: access to sensitive data due to data leakage, unproven technologies usage, and security gaps in third-party software etc. 

However, experienced IT teams know how to avoid security risks and build a secure solution for you. They follow the latest fintech compliance regulations, provide sufficient employee training, promote cybersecurity mindset, detect errors early, use security-focused tools, and test everything thoroughly. To learn more about security in fintech software development, read our another article.

📍Tip: Hiring the Go developer team, ask them about measures they take to provide fintech projects with a required level of security.

4 tips to hire a Go developer team to create a  fintech app

Here we will sum up the key competencies of a developer team capable of implementing a good fintech project.

Industry-relevant expertise and portfolio

confirming their skills in fintech projects development

When you choose a Go development company to create your fintech app, one of the main criteria is successful cases in the niche. Technical solutions and ideas are easily transferred from one language to another, and Go is so simple that developers with sufficient experience in fintech can quickly and efficiently master it— even if they have coded in other languages before.

At Surf, we have rich cross-industry experience and take the best of it while working on new projects. For example, we know how to turn a startup into a market leader step by step; how to build a custom ERP system used by 600+ restaurants; or how to create an app that helps a company sell items three times more often. 

To say some words about our fintech use cases, that is our team who developed the first Flutter banking app in Europe, launched an app for several banks, and created the first digital bank in Pakistan from zero. 

Engagement and readiness to discuss 

in order to find the best possible solution

Skilled fintech software development companies usually have more than one way to suggest to solve a problem or do a task: so, it’s no sense for them to make you choose the solution they suggest as the best one. Moreover, a good contractor is able to explain differences between technologies and make incomprehensible aspects clear. 

Choosing a Go developer team, pay attention to communication with them. If the discussion  runs in a nervous manner, or you lack clear explanations, it’s better to search for another contractor. Manner of communication indicates the attitude to clients and approach to work in general.

At Surf, we care for maximum comfort for the clients. We appreciate transparency and know how important it is for project success. Our PMs are always ready to explain the pros and cons of various solutions. We never leave our clients in the middle of the way to sink or swim. After release, we offer the product support and further development (including handing users’ feedback and star ratings in the stores), or transfer the tasks to the client’s in-house team if necessary. 

Strong engineering culture

supported by proven experience and community recognition

A good programmer would not churn out ready-made solutions, but follows trends and innovations, applying them to offer the client a competitive advantage. 
At Surf, since 2011 we have been developing a strong engineering culture based on the profound technical background of our experts, engagement, and high motivation. Our experience and approach allows us to take up the most challenging projects and bring them to success. As Google Certified Agency we gained early access to Google technologies and are early adopters of the technologies announced at WWDC conferences and Google I/O.

Transparent pricing model

from the project estimation until transfer for in-house development 

As fintech projects are as a rule long-lasting and complicated, the pricing model for them that we choose is Time & material. It implies that the development process is split into various stages, or sprints, and money is paid monthly depending on the scope of work. 

However, there is one more thing that provides our clients with higher transparency in fintech software development. If you want to find out in advance, how much it costs to create and launch your app, what scope of work should be planned, and what the finished product concept looks like, we offer to start with the Sprint Zero. This is a design sprint that helps form the foundation for successful products by the way of forming and checking concepts, creating design concepts and project roadmap. It takes from 1 to 3 weeks and costs about 5% of the project.

After the project is finished, we transfer all the documents for further in-house development. For example, by the time we released the first banking app on Flutter, the bank’s department had already set up its own Flutter development team. 

Surf’s specialists helped them conduct technical interviews, then worked with new bank developers, created some features together, and showed them how things work.

Having analyzed features that differentiate a high-performing Go developer team from others, now we see that the most successful IT products are created in the intersection of proven expertise, strong engineering culture, engagement, and transparency. 

To sum things up

In fintech projects IT teams meet various challenges: high loads, need for great performance and top level of security, error risks. Choosing a Go developer company to create your fintech app, note that they should have experience in fintech apps development and know what technologies and approaches to choose in various cases.   

At Surf we have proven expertise, including Go- and Flutter-powered projects for popular banks from all over the world. We apply the best fintech software development practices and follow the trends in app building to help businesses get powerful results.