Developers play an integral role in the growth of fintech solutions. S&P Global Market Intelligence’s report on the State of the Global Fintech Developer done with Rapyd investigates the experiences and opinions of fintech developers. We examined the projects and initiatives that fintech developers are working on, are interested in, and excited about. From our survey of 500+ developers worldwide, we observed that Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) are being deployed to solve top challenges such as security and fraud prevention and increasing workloads. We also observed that payments is a key focus area of fintech developers. More than half of respondents reported they have been working on payments-related applications over the past year.
Read what we learned about this critically important cohort, how Machine Learning is being applied to payments technology, and how developers are overcoming critical project challenges and taking on new fintech opportunities.
As payment modernization has become a greater strategic priority for merchants, payment-related projects drive much of the work in fintech development. The pandemic has highlighted how businesses with an efficient and effective payments infrastructure adapted and capitalized on changes to customer needs and behaviors.
Our survey tells us that over half of the respondents stated that they were working on payment projects, including digital wallets, P2P payment applications and remittances. Within payments, key initiatives include improving payout processes (36%), integrating local/alternative payment methods (33%) and integrating payment gateways/processors (32%).
Although payment technologies can drive greater organizational efficiencies, financial services and apps can be costly and complex to develop. The survey revealed that 26% of respondents use off-the-shelf tools, while more than two in five spend more time developing in-house tools than their other job responsibilities. This indicates significant time is used to develop in-house tools.
Developers had worked on in-house development projects to improve payout/disbursement processes (36%), integrate local/alternative payment methods (33%) – with a greater number in larger organizations – and enhance security/fraud prevention capabilities (33%). In this last category, 36% of developers expressly reported being unsatisfied with the project. To create these projects, developers rely on APIs for a creative and modular approach to integrate components when creating a new offering or adding capabilities.
Given the volume of transactions and the variety of payment methods used online, merchants need to continue development efforts to enhance security and prevent fraud at every stage of the payment process. When asked what developers saw as the biggest challenges impacting the business or their work, 55% of the developers gave security as the top response.
The research also showed a clear indication that the vast majority (87% of the respondents) are interested in working in the area of authentication and security – showing that developers want to be more involved in this critical initiative. Another significant challenge cited by developers was the increasing workload without enough developers (47%), further emphasizing the greater demand for development resources in general.
We saw trends that fintech developers, across all regions and age groups, have a strong interest in data and artificial intelligence (AI) projects, with 76% of respondents identifying AI/machine learning (ML) as the greatest area of opportunity in their work. 41% of respondents were recently involved in data/AI initiatives.
Applying AI to address security and fraud challenges enabled greater preventative measures deployment with less labor-intensive intervention. Beyond security, AI/ML has far-reaching implications for addressing the increasing workloads of developers and the lack of automation across all areas of fintech development.
Although the speed at which code is developed and deployed varies between companies, the general feeling is that faster is better. Our survey also looked at the preferences of developers regarding coding languages. Across all geographies, the three most frequently used coding languages were Python with 36%, Java with 35% and JavaScript with 33%. There was also a greater preference for Python from experienced developers.
Our survey revealed that AI/ML remains an untapped opportunity for developers to solve problems from increasing workloads and a lack of automation to improving security and fraud prevention. We also observed that payments is a critical area of fintech developers, with the majority of respondents reporting working on payments-related applications over the past year.
However, there is also a clear need for increased partnerships and the purchase of ready-made tools, as more than two in five developers must balance building in-house tools with their many other job responsibilities. Delivering transformative fintech products and services requires providing creative and talented professionals with the skills and resources to build transformative applications.
Rapyd’s State of the Global Fintech Developer Study with S & P Global Market Intelligence’s 451 Research is a study based on primary research survey data. This research seeks to assess the market dynamics of a key enterprise technology segment through the lens of the “on the ground” experience and opinions of real practitioners — what they are doing, and why they are doing it.
The fintech developer trends and findings presented in this report draw on a custom global survey of 502 fintech developers. The survey was fielded in Q2 2021 and included respondents based in the US, UK, Singapore, New Zealand, India, Hong Kong and Australia.
Photo from Olia Danilevich for Pexels.
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