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How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Mobile Wallet Application?

Manish Jain

Table of Contents

If you look at the recent stats, you’d be surprised to see that your favourite coffee brand Starbucks has been earning enormously with its mobile wallet app strategy. Starbucks, in a recent interview, mentioned that “payments made via mobile increased to 30% of the transaction in the US stores, which is up by 3% from their first quarter (it was 27% in Q1) in 2017.”

Starbucks is a clear winner in mobile app payments. It has rather surpassed big shots like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz expressed his joy to this overwhelming sale and said, “We continue to see broad customer acceptance and adoption of our mobile payment technologies,” He also mentioned, “Today in the U.S. alone, over 13 million customers were actively using our mobile apps. And we are now averaging more than 7 million mobile transactions in our stores each week–representing 16% of total tender. That’s more than any other bricks-and-mortar retailer in the marketplace.”

So, speaking about mobile payments, we see that not only this service is helping in driving brand management with customers but is also building on an already existing infrastructure. Customers are being given much more convenience with their smartphones that they really don’t need to carry their wallet, master and visa cards to the stores when shopping or to restaurants when dining in there.

Here’re a few mobile payment market share stats:

Of course, many other brands and startups are looking to follow Starbuck’s mobile app model after seeing this huge profit the company has added to its portfolio. But as they say, nothing comes as easy as it seems. Mobile application development, be it iOS app development or Android app development, is tough to implement and maintain.

What are the benefits of a mobile wallet app?

What’s your first step to mobile wallet app development?

Now that we have assessed how important a mobile wallet application is, we come to the more important part- how to get a winning wallet app developed.

Application development attaches a great deal of time, effort and cost with it. Whenever we’ve tried digging into our client’s apprehensions towards app development, we’ve realized that the cost of development is a major concern to many of them. This is justified since they invest their hard-earned savings into a project which they hope to bring them good business and return on investment.

Most companies fear to trust any app developers or app development companies because they have had harrowing experiences dealing with them. They were either screwed up by some run-of-the-mill developers or received worse results even after spending excessively. If you’re one among them, we are here to guide you the best. When it comes to Android app development or iOS app development, we make one of the best advisors across the world.

For the beginners in the field of mobile app development, the foremost step is to gain some insights into how it works.

You need to find answers to several questions like these before turning to any offshore development company. So, don’t jump into finalizing the decision just looking at our portfolio. Take a call with the project manager and understand if they match your standards.

Best practices in creating a mobile wallet app

What is the average cost of a mobile wallet app and how does it vary?

Coming back to the mobile wallet app development, the cost of development depends on the various features it includes and the time it takes to develop the app.

Typically, a mobile wallet app allows linking and integrating different types of payment gateways/methods like credit/debit cards or digital currencies along with additional features like coupon codes, loyalty cards, reward points, the limit of the wallet and likewise.

In most cases, a wallet app is an extension to an eCommerce/retail app or a restaurant online ordering app or a ride-hailing app like Uber or Zomato. Any app that sells services or products can have a mobile wallet added to it.

Types of mobile wallet applications by technology

Broadly, we can classify a mobile wallet application into:

On average, for an app like above, the cost of development would range from $40k-50k. It will take around 4-6 months to finally develop the app. This cost comprises the number of billing hours, the number of app developers, designers and other important resources involved in the project, API integration or any hardware/software integration. The cost of app development by companies also includes the infrastructure, hardware cost and office overheads.

This cost may go beyond and vary if you want to develop a feature-rich app like including NFC and iBeacon technology. However, the native iOS app development and native Android app development would not see any variation in the cost but there could be a slight difference in time estimation and efforts invested.

Apart from the basis, some of the important features of a modern wallet app are:

You may consider them to make your app more powerful and user-centric.

Conversely, if you want to develop a hybrid mobile wallet app, the cost will cut down to $20-25k. It will take around 2-3 months to our team of seasoned developers to launch your app.

To get an accurate estimate of such apps, get in touch with our experts at Konstant.

One piece of advice: If you’re building a mobile app for your business or are planning to start one in the near future, always think about what your customer wants and then proceed.