NuBank, Google Pay, and Bancolombia are shining examples of big financial brands that have harnessed the power of Flutter to develop their digital assets. We will explain why this open-source framework, created by Google, is about more than just facilitating the creation of cross-platform apps.
Flutter is used in the financial industry to create homogeneous experiences across interaction channels. In this article, we will focus on some advantages of why Flutter has enormous potential in the projects of banks, fintech, insurance, and other companies related to the financial sector. This is a summary of the topics we are going to address:
Flutter, the Key to Omnichannel in Financial Apps
The contact points between a bank and its users have increased recently. In addition to interactions in physical establishments or over the phone, today, we engage with financial institutions through online platforms and all electronic devices. Besides, customers have increasingly demanding expectations for frictionless digital solutions with a high level of personalization.
Against this backdrop, offering a uniform user experience across all channels is no small challenge. This is precisely where Flutter provides an excellent tool to address solutions in mobile environments (Android, iOS) with transactional apps, web apps for personal users or companies, and even desktop apps for points of self-service in banking offices. We invite you to read this article to learn about how Flutter works.
Why Does Flutter Allow Near-Native Performance?
For a long time, the performance of native apps, i.e., those developed specifically for a platform, was tough to achieve through cross-platform development processes.
Flutter solves this problem by managing the codebase that is “translated” to run on each platform (iOS, Android, Web).
Native Compilations in Mobile Android and iOS
For mobile platforms, Flutter uses Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation. In this process, the codebase is translated into native platform libraries before the app begins to work. This allows a much faster execution time because the CPU can run it directly and perform like a native app.
Notably, Flutter only uses the AOT compilation when the app is in production. During the development process and to facilitate testing and iteration, Flutter utilizes Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation.
WebAssembly for Web Compilations
For web apps, Flutter offers near-native performance through WebAssembly. WebAssembly is a binary instruction format Flutter employs to run the codebase in browsers. Thanks to W3C, it is bound to be the next standard for web distribution.
WebAssembly is generally used for apps where performance is crucial, such as image processing in an online game. However, it is instrumental in projects where efficiency, security, and performance are essential, such as those of financial institutions.
Do Modularity and Reusable Components Power Flutter Projects?
In addition to using a codebase that shares business logic across all channels, Flutter favors the creation of reusable modules that facilitate app maintenance and accelerate the development process.
Instead of developing from scratch for each use case, Flutter’s composability allows you to work with reusable components throughout the app. If a change needs to be made to a button, a custom widget, or any other component used in multiple parts of the digital asset, Flutter makes it easy for these changes to be automatically propagated to each place where the component has been reused.
All this has an important effect on project efficiency, but above all, it helps create a consistent look and feel across all platforms on which the codebase runs.
What Role Does the Repository Strategy Play in a Flutter Project?
Another strong point of Flutter is that it allows you to work with approaches for a single or several repositories.
Monorepository strategies are recommended for digital assets where multiple apps share libraries and codebases. This approach is ideal for reusing components, simplifying refactoring, and centralizing all tasks, including testing.
Meanwhile, multi-repository strategies are designed so that each app or component can evolve independently. This approach is recommended if the apps that make up the digital ecosystem need to have specific releases or versions. It is also recommended when teams have specialized responsibilities and particularized budgets in the evolution of each component or feature, as it usually occurs in financial institutions.
Can Flutter Be Integrated with Generative Artificial Intelligence?
Another strength of Flutter that promises to be very useful for financial entities is its integration with AI libraries. Because of this, we may see financial apps that use intelligent agents based on generative AI. This would allow banks to develop digital financial assistants that, relying on user information, can give personalized recommendations or precise answers to queries made in natural language.
We invite you to read this article to learn more about how companies can take advantage of Gen AI-based intelligent agents.
Flutter: Some Success Cases in the Financial Sector
Many banks and fintech companies have chosen Flutter to unify the development of their apps on different platforms.
An example is Google’s use of Flutter to rebuild Google Pay and unify its Android and iOS apps, reducing the engineering effort by 70 % and lines of code by 35 %. This is an even more remarkable result, considering 300 features had to be rewritten and tested with 100 million users.
Another similar case is Virgin Money. After overcoming the learning curve expected when adopting a new framework, the development team utilized Flutter to increase its efficiency and offer a coherent experience to all its customers.
In a Nutshell
Flutter’s ability to offer near-native performance, modularity, and reusable components makes it an efficient and scalable solution for all types of projects. In financial projects, large players are taking advantage of these characteristics to solve challenges for creating omnichannel experiences.
Integration with generative AI opens up new possibilities in personalized financial services. It demonstrates that Flutter is a powerful option for banks, fintech companies, and insurers that seek to bring the user experience to the next level.
