Have you noticed how mobile phones have become instrumental in many essential aspects of our lives? Today, you can easily go shopping without carrying a wallet — all you need is a smartphone with a few payment apps. On the seller’s side, the need for POS terminals is diminishing, as mobile devices can now handle transactions.
While most people may not give much thought to what — or who—is behind this incredible flexibility of payments, banks, vendors, payment service providers, and processing companies increasingly recognize the value of mobile app development and often face the need to hire mobile app developers.
Whether it’s retail, e-commerce, fintech, or on-demand services, mobile app developers play a key role in creating and integrating innovative apps that support a wide range of payment options.
The Role of Mobile App Developers in Payment Processing
The question ‘Why hire mobile app developers?’ is especially relevant for organizations involved in payment processing. The answer lies in the fact that mobile app developers bridge the gap between users, businesses, and payment systems.
This, however, is a simplified explanation, while the full answer can be broken down into multiple components. From integrating payment gateways to ensuring security and providing great UX, mobile app developers’ technical and creative skills are critical for building reliable, up-to-date payment systems.
Let’s break this down further.
Key Components of Payment Processing in Mobile Apps
Payment processing is associated with several essential services and technologies, and implementing them requires relevant experience. So, when you as a merchant hire dedicated app developers, you should be aware of what skills and expertise to look for.
Here are these key components:
1. Payment gateways
A payment gateway in a mobile app is a service that authorizes and processes credit card payments for merchants such as e-commerce sites and traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Payment gateways serve as an intermediary between the merchant and the financial institutions involved in the transaction.
Any company that wants to sell products or services via a mobile app needs a payment gateway. This can be a plug-and-play solution or a custom-built application. Either way, if you’re such a merchant seeking to integrate a payment gateway, hiring dedicated mobile developers is crucial for this purpose.
2. APIs and SDKs
Even if you’re new to software development, you’ve likely heard abbreviations like APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and SDKs (Software Development Kits). These are tools that help third-party developers integrate various services into the apps they build.
In payment processing, APIs and SDKs, correspondingly, are tools created by payment service providers to enable developers to integrate payment processing capabilities into mobile apps without building everything from scratch.
3. Encryption
Encryption is a security method that masks sensitive information from unauthorized users. It scrambles data so that only authorized parties can decrypt and read it. When a user enters payment details in a mobile app, the data is encrypted before being transmitted to the payment processor.
Data security is vital for building customer trust. Not only can data breaches damage a company’s reputation, but they also often lead to significant financial losses. According to a Statista report, the average cost of a data breach in the United States was nearly $9.5 million in 2024.
With stakes being so high, it’s not surprising that businesses of all sizes realize the importance of having relevant expertise to secure customer data. That said, hiring dedicated mobile app developers with experience in encryption is paramount to protecting user data and maintaining user confidence in the payment system.
4. Compliance with Security Standards
Another reason to hire mobile application developers to help you with the payment processing part of your business is also related to security. Standards and regulations like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) govern how payment data should be handled and protected.
In simple terms, if an app complies with these standards, it meets legal and industry requirements, which protects both the business and its customers from data breaches and legal consequences.
5. Cross-Platform Compatibility
Android or iOS? While mobile users have the freedom to choose between these two operating systems, as a merchant, you don’t have that privilege. Your payment processing functionality needs to work seamlessly on both.
In software development terms, it’s called cross-platform compatibility, i.e. the ability of a mobile app to perform equally well across iOS and Android devices. This is another crucial factor that contributes to ensuring efficient payment processing.
6. UX/UI design
To this point, we’ve been discussing the role of mobile app developers and the necessity to hire them in the context of backend development. Meanwhile, the mobile frontend is equally important. UX/UI design is yet another crucial area of expertise for payment apps to be successful.
Mobile app developers are responsible for creating the payment interface within a mobile app, which includes the layout, menus, buttons, and overall payment process flow. The payment process needs to be intuitive and straightforward. A poor user experience can lead to abandoned carts and lost sales. And as a merchant, this is exactly what you want to avoid, right?
Where to Find Mobile App Developers for Hire?
We have highlighted just a few reasons why hiring mobile developers is essential for companies involved in payment processing. However, recognizing this necessity is only the first step towards a successful payment app. The next one is finding and hiring the right mobile app development team.
Let’s quickly explore several options to hire mobile app developers.
Option #1. Build an Internal Mobile App Development Team
It’s the most expensive and time-consuming option, ideal if you have a large pipeline of ongoing mobile app development projects. For one-off tasks like integrating payment processing, explore the other options below.
Option #2. Hire a Mobile App Development Company
This is the safest, quickest, and most cost-effective way to hire professional mobile app developers and have your financial project successfully implemented. Reputable mobile app development companies have extensive pools of vetted mobile app developers whom you can hire remotely on an hourly basis or full-time.
Option #3. Hire Freelance Mobile Developers
While this is the cheapest option, it comes with greater risks. Partnering with freelancers may not guarantee the needed level of expertise for complex, technically challenging projects. Meanwhile, customer finances are a critical area where quality and reliability cannot be compromised.
Conclusion
We’re living in the era of fintech, and mobile payments are its inseparable part. Companies seeking to hire mobile app developers for their fintech products should understand the strong correlation, though sometimes it can feel subtle, between business performance and the quality of mobile development. Mobile app developers are an important element in this equation.
