Of course, it depends on how much custom functions the client needs. In general, 4-6 months is a good estimate if you start with a pre-built platform like Azure’s mobile banking app. Conducting detailed requirements, custom screen development, and building the API’s to the back-end of your IT systems will generally take that amount of time

Yes if you choose to keep the same functionality that’s available in our pre-built white label solution, and only want your own branding and UI theme to be incorporated into the solution, the roll out time can be cut down by 30-40% with the assumption that integrating with bank IT ecosystem don’t need major redesign of backend APIs.

The App, as we see in the website or in demo, is only the starting point. It provides a platform to begin with so that our clients don’t have to start from scratch. We will implement a turn-key solution and help our clients upload their App to the market-place.

This is a topic that many technical people debate and there is no one answer that best fits all situations. Organizations need to make a decision based on their availability of skill sets and the functions they would like to build in the App. If you want to leverage lot of the native functions that Android and IOS provides for their specific devices, then a native App may be the way to go. However, you need to realize that native apps require separate code bases for Android and IOS systems – that adds to overhead and defects that has to be managed for 2 separate code bases. Availability of skill-sets is also an issue for Native Apps. Hybrid, on the other hand, may not give all the native functionality of a device, but almost all functionality can be developed using a Hybrid App. It requires a single code base and skill-set availability is much easier than maintaining a Native App.

While big banks and financial institutions spend tens of millions of dollars on their websites and Apps, most small banks, credit unions and local financial institutions don’t have those budgets. So, they feel that building an App is a big budget item. Leveraging a platform like Azure Mobile App platform, helps institutions in cutting a huge amount of Development effort and leap -rog to building an App quickly on a very reasonable budget.

Data security of financial Apps is the core concern of all financial institutions and as such Azure has built an App that takes Security as the #1 concern. None of the data that the user will see in the App actually reside on the user device – they are for display purposes only. The actual data resides in the back-end servers of the financial institution. (Some financial institutions rely on the Cloud to store their data – all Cloud servers are heavily protected as security is the key concern of all Cloud service providers as well). The transit of data from the back-end to the device is heavily encrypted with hash algorithms making it virtually impossible to decode the data. All business logic resides on the back-end servers as well, thereby shielding both the data and the business logic from hackers who may gain access to the mobile device. By some hacking algorithms.

The Azure mobile app platform is designed ground-up with scalability and extensibility in its core. We are using Docker based Microservices as the technology stack making them independently deployable and scalable. We can think of one banking module as one microservice. For e.g. User Management, Authentication, Accounts, Transactions, Bill Pay can be separate microservices. Microservices on docker is considered state-of-the-art approach to building scalable and manageable solutions. Different microservices can even be enabled through different technology stack and integrated without much hassle.

Designed with this kind of dynamic content curation requirements, the Azure mobile app platform has a backend admin console that enables bank’s Business and IT team to effortlessly configure the mobile app behavior dynamically without the need to release a new update of the mobile app to the marketplace. The platform provides ability to advertise your specials, market new products, run promotional campaigns, change and add interest or service charges, customize multifactor security configuration, configure and send push messages, communicate alerts and general information from the bank for existing and prospective customers through the mobile app.