Why Fintech Business’ Need To Gain Trust To Launch Into The Market
The coronavirus pandemic has presented challenges for many business’ across the world. However, there have been some industries that have found their services required more than ever.
A fast growing industry due to its convenience and accessibility, fintech has been steadily bubbling in the background over the past few years. Now, especially following the pandemic, fintech has become extremely important with particular aspects including contactless payments and digital banking.
With the Independent claiming that fintech will play an important role in the UK’s economic recovery, it’s a crucial time to invest in your fintech’s brand and mobile app but that isn’t necessarily easy.
The very nature of fintech, given the fact it exists around finance, can make audiences sceptical. Whether it’s attracting new users to making their first time transactions and deposits or encouraging users to link their financial details for contactless payments, questions on security and credibility are common.
So how can you gain trust when introducing a new fintech app to the market? Here are four tips to get you started.
1. Be transparent
One of the most important aspects, for businesses in any industry, is transparency and its ability to build trust.
When it comes to your new app, make a point of being as transparent as possible in terms of pricing and benefits. Your customers should know what to expect at every point of their journey, especially if it’s going to cost them something.
2. Talk about compliance and security
Financial companies all have to deal with compliance rules and that’s no different for the branch of fintech. From GDPR to FCA and PRA, in the UK alone there are regulations and frameworks to follow.
Alongside this, it’s absolutely crucial that your app is completely safe from data breaches and cyber attacks. Handling customer data and financial information can make you a target, so you’ll need to invest in the best security possible.
Harshi Carey at HTP Consultancy explains that cyber security is how individuals and organisations reduce the risk of cyber attacks and start-ups can protect their intellectual property, reputation and trade secrets by embracing security in their culture.
“The COVID-19 era has increased sophisticated cybercrime and it is believed that a new attack occurs every 39 seconds.
“If you are a mobile app or fintech company the security on a mobile app can be breached, particularly if the company creating the app doesn’t focus on securing the application prior to its deployment.
“Users often store their personal information, passwords and bank transactions and if that data is breached, companies will be heavily fined, in the EU that’s 4% of your global revenue, whilst your reputation will also be sabotaged.
“Just remember that it’s not too corporate to use security. ‘’
All of this may feel a little overwhelming to your customers, particularly those who may just be experiencing fintech products for the first time, so make sure you take the time to discuss compliance and security.
Put in the effort to explain acronyms in plain English and demonstrate how you will keep customer data safe. By taking steps to do this, you’ll go a long way in building ongoing trust.
3. Understand your the pain points for your customers
To really create something that your customer needs, as well as wants, you need to understand their pains and concerns during the initial customer development interviews.
During this process, making sure you are asking as many open-ended questions as possible. Along with the core pains and problems you’re going to solve, get them to share other concerns. What do they want to know about you to feel safe? What do they consider a red flag? Have they or their friends had a negative experience with your competitors? Do they have any prejudice regarding your industry or product? Do they know about other companies that failed to build trust and lost clients’ data or money?
Once you have established all of the above, make sure that you address all these findings in your product. Then reflect it in your marketing and interface copy in simple, friendly words.
4. Prioritise sharing your story
Audiences like to align themselves with brands who touch their own values, so be confident in showing a bit of personality to users.
Also, don’t be afraid to share the experiences from existing users in the form of reviews, case studies and testimonials. Sites such as Trustpilot (Trustbox integrated for Apps) and Yotpo are a great tool to use when showing potential customers that you have regular users, with the added bonus that they will be sharing their own opinions of your app. We trust word of mouth and encouraging your users to become ambassadors is a great idea.
Tim Stebkov at Strebkov Design specialises in helping in fintech startups, brokers and financial companies with UX/UI design to ensure the app works and provides that elegant and functional visual interface that really helps establish a fintech brand. He says:
“Building trust is probably the most critical challenge for a fintech brand.
“You might have the most advanced technology in the world, a fancy mobile app and a fantastic set of features but if you don’t address the fundamental concerns with security, users are going to be put off from buying. When making financial decisions, people want to be sure that their assets are safe, their personal information won’t be shared and the provider won’t go out of business.
“Sometimes, when we ask the user to agree to T&Cs, we highlight 3-5 most important things (1 line per item) in plain language. We also provide a link to a full document (20+ pages in grey 8pt text) and communicating these critical terms in simple words is crucial for building trust.
“Almost every financial app has a KYC (know your customer) functionality meaning that the app must gather personal data about the user to follow the regulations. Everybody hates it, but that’s the way it is.
“To ensure good practice, explain the benefits of going through the KYC process for example, we are a regulated company, we follow the rules, the government protects you, your assets are safe, etc.”
When launching any product to market it’s important that customer trust is there, but fintech does bring extra hoops to jump through. By following our above tips, you’ll be well on your way to building a loyal audience who can trust you and your brand.
