Building an e-wallet that drives a faster return on investment is not everybody’s piece of cake. It requires a staged approach to the eWallet app development. Broadly, there are three stages of an eWallet lifecycle — MVP, initial launch, and service expansion.

FinTech developers optimize the use of the agile development approach to make the most out of the staged approach. With years of experience in eWallet design and development, I’ve identified that successful eWallets get rolled out into the market with limited features, and get introduced with innovative features as they get to hold onto the market.

At the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage, the digital wallet won’t need features like third-party bill payments. Later, during the service expansion phase, such features should be introduced. By launching a beta version of the app sooner rather than later, eWallet service providers will have ample time to collect feedback before launching a full-fledged app.

What is the ROI of an app?

An app’s ROI can be realized by determining what success means for your business. Adding features that directly affect the bottom line of your business can help you recognize a return on your investment (ROI) upon creating an app to represent your business. The most common methods of making money from an app are advertising combined with services, such as selling goods through an online store, charging for money transfers, or offering in-app purchases.

Make an eWallet App — Starts here

I’ll take you through all these three stages in the latter part of this article. First, let’s have a look at the payment market status in 2021.

The dream of a cashless society will soon become a reality. The following are the growth statistics of e-wallets in 2021:

• By the end of 2021, the digital payment transaction value will reach $6,685.10 billion. The transaction value will grow further with a CAGR of 12% to reach $10,520.22 billion by 2025.
• China will lead the market by having more than 40 percent share of the total transaction value in 2021.
• With more than a 62% share, digital commerce will hold the largest share in 2021.

E-Wallet MVP Stage

MVPs are aimed to validate the digital wallet app concept. It doesn’t take long to build and launch an MVP in the market, which enables you to tap the market opportunity almost immediately. Also, the cost to make an eWallet app MVP is significantly lower than a full-fledged wallet app.

Your eWallet MVP should incorporate just the right set of features and functionalities so that its effectiveness isn’t at stake. The following are the features you should consider for your eWallet MVP:

Seamless Onboarding

eWallet service providers have to follow several compliances that often blemish the user experience. Of course, nobody wants to deliver a bad user experience. While setting up the digital wallet app, the users would have to upload several documents for identity verification and link bank accounts or debit cards for payments. This can feel overwhelming to them and may lead to app abandonment.

QR-Code Based Payments

The MVP version should allow users to make contactless payments via QR codes. The NFC feature isn’t required at the MVP stage, as most smartphones have a camera capable of scanning QR codes.

Account Management and Payment History

The eWallet should allow users to manage their account information and preferences. Giving them access to the payment history will allow them to be in tune with their payments.

Additional Features for The eWallet Initial Stage

The MVP stage is sufficient enough to provide app service providers with user feedback and test the idea. In the next stage, the eWallet service providers should launch the app with the required features and functionalities to provide the users with everything they need to make payments.

Implement NFC Payments

This is the most important feature of Samsung Pay. I recommend you implement this feature only if you make an eWallet app for developed markets. This is because developed countries tend to have more users with NFC-enabled mobile devices, as these devices are usually expensive.

Chatbot

When it comes to money handling, customer support is required to be available 24/7. However, allocating manpower for this task will significantly increase the cost of managing a digital Wallet and so does the outsourcing. AI-powered chatbots are the best option to make customer support cost-efficient.

Third-Party Bill Payments

When every successful digital wallet app facilitates third-party payments, it is mindful for an eWallet service provider to enable this functionality into their mobile wallet. The users will prefer the eWallet that allows them to perform more than just P2P payments.

Payment Automation

The users should be able to automate payments for several services within the eWallet. However, the eWallet service providers can limit the transaction value to keep this feature safe from fraudulent activities.

Bill Splitting and Payment Requests

These are innovative features that can be implemented into an eWallet app in much less time. The users should be able to split bills and make payment requests to other eWallet users. This will make an eWallet app in 2021 more versatile.

Advanced Features for Service Expansion

As eWallets become mature over time, they should offer advanced features and functionalities for the users. The following are some of the advanced features that are worth implementing in an eWallet during the service expansion stage.

Spend Analyzer and Budgeting

Your e-wallet app will tend to have the customer’s payment data. You can utilize all that data to create a new feature for your customers. By allowing the customer to plan their spendings to improve their financial health will build a much stronger relationship between you and them. Not only this, when they’ll have budgeted and spend analyzing features, they’ll tend to use your e-wallet app more frequently.

Wearable Device Integration

Although this isn’t a service expansion feature, implementing this is expensive. I would recommend you implement this feature only if your target audience has enough wearable device users.

Ticket Booking

You can implement this feature by partnering with third-party service providers like Cinemas, Transportation companies, travel agencies, etc. This will also allow your customers to use digital wallet balances in a more versatile way.

Card Management

This feature not only highlights allowing users to manage their payment methods (i.e cards issued by banks) but also incorporates issuing debit/credit cards on the behalf of your e-wallet business.

Conclusion

It is not as simple to make an eWallet app when compared to traditional apps. Indeed, a phased approach to development is the right way to ensure the faster return of the eWallet app development cost. Every phase will provide valuable user and market feedback. On top of all, using an agile development approach will allow eWallet service providers to incorporate market trends into their eWallet apps.

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