3 fintech development trends to know in 2025
Amid economic and geopolitical uncertainties, the demand for fintech software development remains strong, with companies looking to become more resilient and stay competitive. However, if you are looking to launch your own cryptocurrency payment system, crowdfunding platform, or stock trading app in the near future, you need to familiarize yourself with the key trends shaping fintech development today.
The understanding of these influential tendencies can help you build more competitive software, streamline the development process, and maximize the project’s ROI. In this article, fintech software developers highlight three development trends you need to know and apply to succeed in the modern fintech landscape.
AI-native development
As AI technology has become more widespread and its transformative potential became evident, fintech companies have started to integrate AI into their solutions en masse. However, over time, it has become evident that integrating AI tools with legacy fintech software is becoming more and more challenging. Since many legacy systems have legacy monolithic architectures and use outdated technologies and frameworks, they can lack compatibility and interoperability with modern AI tools, which often can only be solved via major system upgrades and overhauls.
So rather than layering artificial intelligence as an add-on to legacy software, modern fintech players are shifting to AI-native development. This entails building software systems inherently compatible with artificial intelligence, optimized for the efficient and scalable use of AI algorithms, and integrated with AI-powered functionalities (AI automation, personalization, analytics, etc.) right from the start.
Needless to say, creating an AI-native solution is impossible without having an AI-friendly software architecture in its backbone. To be more specific, such an architecture should include data pipelines, storage, and computing infrastructure needed to support continuous model training, deployment, and inference. It should also incorporate mechanisms for AI-enabled data governance to ensure secure and efficient data management. Enterprises building AI-native fintech systems can enhance strategic decision-making by leveraging competitive intelligence software. Tools like the Competitor Analysis Tool from Valona provide real-time insights into market shifts, competitor activity, and emerging risks that could impact strategy.
As AI-native development has already proven to be a rewarding strategy for fintechs, the shift towards this paradigm will most likely continue. According to Silicon Valley Bank’s Future of Fintech report, the median value created per dollar invested in AI-native fintech businesses is higher compared to the value from traditional fintech investments, meaning AI-native development can deliver higher ROI.
AI-assisted development
While modern fintech companies increasingly implement AI into their products, this is not the only AI application gaining popularity in fintech. This technology is also actively used to streamline the software development process itself, significantly reducing the costs of software delivery and improving time to market for their solutions.
According to Boston Consulting Group’s fintech report “Prudence, Profits, and Growth”, generative AI is now a true game-changer for developer productivity, and in the near future, the impact of this technology will grow even bigger. Using generative AI tools, fintech development teams can generate code snippets or even entire functions much faster compared to writing code manually. Similarly, they can also use generative AI to prepare technical documentation, create test cases, and even roll out software updates more efficiently.
Another report from Boston Consulting Group, “Fintech’s Next Chapter: Scaled Winners and Emerging Disruptors,” reveals one more notable trend – the growing use of agentic AI in software development. AI agents are able to operate with minimal human input and supervision, which can provide a fintech company with additional efficiency gains. For example, AI agents can automatically review code for errors in real-time and provide suggestions for fixes, helping teams ensure higher-quality code without constant manual reviews. AI agents can also execute tests autonomously, enabling teams to minimize interruptions in the testing process and improve tests based on past results.
User-centered design
Users’ expectations towards fintech solutions are getting higher than ever. In addition to robust functionality, fintech app customers increasingly demand ease of use and convenience, while friction in the user experience can negatively impact their satisfaction and engagement. 93% of small businesses and 89% of individual consumers participated in the State of Fintech survey from the Financial Technology Association named user-friendly design their top priority when choosing a fintech solution.
This rise in user expectations prompts fintech vendors to increasingly rely on user-centered design practices in their software development workflows. This approach implies that businesses should take into account user needs feedback when creating a fintech product.
Teams following this approach begin with the definition of target users and user research conducted via interviews, surveys, and other data-gathering techniques. Development teams then use the research results and user feedback to create different types of solution prototypes, from sketches to high-fidelity mockups.
After conducting usability testing with prototypes and refining software design based on the results of these tests, development teams turn the prototype into a fully-operational app which, if needed, is also fine-tuned based on user feedback even after the launch. This way, user-centered design enables fintech vendors to deliver more efficient, intuitive, and engaging solutions for their intended users.
Final thoughts
Building efficient and competitive fintech solutions is challenging, but following the recent trends in fintech development can help you increase your chances for success. This will not only enable you to build a product that can better meet evolved user needs, but also streamline the software creation process itself, leading to accelerated time-to-market and development cost reduction.
A developer team possessing solid fintech expertise can help you stay ahead of these and other emerging industry trends. Experienced developers can elaborate your unique business requirements, conceptualize the solution that would match them, design it to be intuitive and user-centric, and aid with any other tasks, from coding and AI integration to testing and post-launch support.