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How to Build a Payment App like PayPal in 3 Easy Steps

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Before Elon Musk perfected the electric car and began the electric revolution for automobiles, he was one of the core people responsible for the successful launch of PayPal.

PayPal has been a successful platform ever since its inception. As of 2020, it stands as one of the largest companies in the world and a member of the Fortune 500. PayPal’s success as an online payment processing platform was no fluke either.

The foresight of its founders was proven right. With the rise of the smartphone, payment processing over the internet has grown at an exponential pace. PayPal works in almost every country in the world and has over 277 million users globally.

However, despite its massive reach, there are many alternatives to PayPal and competitors that provide a separate USP from PayPal. With the outbreak of the 2020 pandemic and the ongoing move to 5G, online payments will soon become the default method of exchanging money. Here are few statistics that support this point.

The most competition for PayPal is within the smartphone app ecosystem. Since PayPal’s app is not the go-to payment processing service for many people, there are fierce competitors of Paypal in the smartphone ecosystem.

This is why payment app are a lucrative opportunity for a business. Creating an app is a lucrative opportunity for a payment-related business to drive up revenue and help its customers.

In our guide, we will go over the various things to keep in mind, when designing a payment app and explain how you can create a payment app with no coding. Let us jump right into it.

The Must-Have Features of a Good Payment App

Every payment app must have a set of basic features. Without these basic features, your payment app will likely be dead on arrival. Here is a list of these features:

• Basic Online Wallet Features: Features such as opening accounts, linking bank accounts, adding debit/credit cards, completing online payment, transaction reporting, etc are the core features for a payment processing app.
• Peer-to-Peer Payment Processing: The ability to send and receive money with close associates is a must-have feature for any payment app.
• ID Verification and KYC: Every payment processing app has a set procedure to confirm and verify its users. Finance is a sensitive industry and verifying your users helps you adapt to its stringent rules and regulations. Verifying also helps avoid illegal activities on your payment app and protects your business from legal problems.
• Merchant-Specific Features: Your payment processing app must also deal with merchants. Ensure that you have a dedicated dashboard for merchants too. You will need CRM features to help in this regard.
• Access to Payment Gateways: One of the core features of your online payment app will be the inclusion of banks, debit cards, competing payment gateways, etc. Ensure that you have transaction deals with the likes of Visa, Mastercard, PayPal etc. These deals will help improve the flexibility and convenience your app aims to provide.
• Push Notifications: Push notifications help you market your business and share information with users. Remember to include push notifications in your app and use these push notifications regularly to market your business.
• Contactless Technology: Technologies like NFC and QR codes have grown in importance since the pandemic of 2020. Ensure that your payment app supports these technologies. If you’re planning to use QR codes, make sure to find a reliable and secure QR code generator online software.

Key Factors to Keep in Mind While Designing a Payment App

There are some key factors you must keep in mind when you design a payment app of your own.

1. Perform proper market research: Market research is an important part of the app creation process. Your product will fail if it doesn’t have a unique USP and does not target a particular audience. Research the payment processing market and find out your niche. Create an app that appeals to your niche and also covers basic features offered by your competitors.
2. Make sure your app supports the main methods of online payments: Today’s payment market is very competitive. Even PayPal struggles to maintain its dominance in the online payment space.

   This is why your app needs to support every major method of online payment. You should enable your users to use your app for:

   1. Peer-to-peer payments
   2. eCommerce payments
   3. Direct payments to retailers
   4. International payments

   Apart from this, supporting other types of transactions will give your app an edge over your competitors.

3. Privacy and Security: A payment app will be responsible for dealing with important and sensitive data about a user’s finances. Everything from bank details to credit card numbers must be securely stored in your app.

   Privacy and security must be given the highest priority through the development process of a payment app. Integrate mobile payment gateways directly to make it easier to protect a user’s security details. Make sure that the app does not expose your users’ financial details and credit card details to any outsider or unknown.

   Not having a secure app can lead to some disastrous consequences for your business. Encrypt your data, add two-factor authentication and comply with various norms such as PCI-DSS.For better encryption, there should be an SSL certificate that secures the data between the server and the browser. Moreover, when a developer creates an app, the code should be hashed and encrypted with Code Signing certificate. It ensures users that the code is not modified since it is signed.

4. Prepare Good Servers: Your app is likely to handle thousands of transactions in a single day. Your servers need to be prepared for handling these transactions. A good payment app is always backed by an excellent server. Depending on the technology you use to create your payment app, you may have to build your own server for better performance.

How to Build a Payment App With Appy Pie in 3 Easy Steps

Building a payment app is easier than before. Thanks to the advancement in technology! It is now possible to build a safe and secure payment app without any coding. This is where Appy Pie AppMakr leads the charge. Appy Pie AppMakr is a leading no-code app development tool that allows you to build simple to complex mobile apps without coding.

With a tool like Appy Pie by your side, you can make a complete payments app without a single line of coding. Appy Pie offers a template-based drag n drop editor that makes it easier to build a payment app in 3 easy steps.

The editor allows you to choose from an extensive library of pre-built templates and customize the design of your app. Features can be added to your app with a simple click or by dragging and dropping them into your app. Each feature is further customizable to meet your business n

eeds. Appy Pie provides over 200+ features that can be added for thousands of use-cases.

All you need to do is:

1. Choose a design of your choice.
2. Add important features, such as payments, transaction history, profiles, etc.
3. Publish your app on Google Play & Apple App Store.

Our guide on how to create an app further goes into detail on how app building with Appy Pie works. Appy Pie’s payment-related features work with the help of a dedicated Stripe integration. This allows you access to leading payment gateways.

With both Stripe and Appy Pie providing advanced encryption for their servers, user data is kept safe with the latest cybersecurity technologies. Creating a modern-day payment app doesn’t need to have an extensive and expensive app development process.

Create your payment app today!

Conclusion

A good payment app will find traction on its own. For example, payment provider Venmo took years to gain traction and popularity but has since become one of the most used payment apps in the USA.

Similarly, your payment app might also take time to grow. The only way to find out if your business is successful is to get into it! Start creating your payment app today!