Everyone seeks to improve their financial position and gain financial freedom, and this is increasingly becoming a reality with the rate of technological advancement.
Today, you don’t need to visit the bank or financial institutions to be able to save, invest, or transact. Through mobile banking and other finance apps, you can save, invest, track your spending, pay off your debt, and dictate your cash flow through your mobile phone. With OEMs by App Samurai, you can pre-install mobile banking and other finance applications on the devices.
This is what mobile finance entails and, in this article, we’ll show you all the mobile finance categories and the best finance app for each category.
What is Mobile Finance?
Mobile finance is the totality of all the financial services you can get on your mobile device. It transcends mobile banking, which is the act of making financial transactions on a mobile device, to gaining access to financial advice, tools, and services that improve your financial standpoint.
Mobile finance utilizes information and communication technology (ICT) and non-bank retail channels to extend the delivery of financial services to clients who cannot be reached by traditional financial services.
Mobile Finance Categories and Useful Apps
As stated earlier, mobile finance is not only about depositing and withdrawing money through your mobile device. Below are different categories of mobile finance through which you’ll find suitable apps that will be of maximum help to you.
1. Personal Finance
Personal finance involves planning and managing personal financial activities such as income generation, spending, saving, investing, and protection. Formerly, you may need to pay a financial consultant or financial institutions to manage your personal finance. Now, with personal finance apps, you can easily connect with your bank account and keep up with your spending as well as track upcoming bill payments, maintain a good credit score, and expand your investment portfolio. Most used mobile finance apps in this category include Mint, You Need a Budget, Personal Capital, Clarity Money, and Prism.
2. Cash Flow
Cash flow is simply the movement of cash or cash equivalents into and out of your business or personal account. Cash-flow management is so important to ensure that you have can pay salaries on time if you run a business or have enough funds to meet your financial plans. Mobile finance apps in this category include PlanGuru, Float, Scoro, QuickBooks, and Pulse.
3. Building Wealth
We all want to build wealth to be financially free. Wealth building is the process that generates long-term income through multiple sources. So, while you receive income from your current job, you need mobile finance apps to help you invest your money for greater future income. The most used mobile finance app in this category are Acorns, Stash, Betterment, Robinhood, and Personal Capital.
4. Payoff
It is almost impossible to stay debt-free. The best you can do to be able to accomplish your future goals like getting married or buying a house is to ensure that you are not accumulating too much debt. The best way to do this is to pay off your debt. Mobile finance apps like ChangEd, Credit Card Payoff, Debt Free, Debt Payoff Assistant, and Mint can help you plan and eventually pay off some of your debts.
5. Budget Management
The best way to ensure that you spend your dollars on the things you plan to spend them on is by creating a budget. To manage and track your income and expenses, budget management apps will provide you budgeting and bill tracking tools, create a complete money management system, and offer warnings when you are close to overspending. Mint, PocketGuard, You Need a Budget, Wally, and Mvelopes are the most used mobile finance apps in this category.
6. Expense Tracker
The name sells it off! Expense tracker apps help you track your expenses so you can stay on top of your cash flow and prepare for tax season. Personal capital, Expensify, Concur, Wally, QuickBooks Self-Employed.
Top Finance Apps
You would notice that some of the apps in different mobile categories appear in more than one category. These apps are simply indispensable. They are the top mobile finance apps you want to make sure to have on your mobile device in 2021. With App Samurai‘s Pre-load service, you can highlight your application on the user screen during device setup and increase your daily loading volume up to 5 times on new devices.
#1. Apple Card
Apple Card is a new entrant in the mobile finance market having been found in 2019. However, like almost everything Apple does, it is spreading like wildfire and changing the way you manage your finances in this decade.
Apple Card first and foremost rewards Apple purchases as well as in-person and online shopping through Apple Pay. Then it helps consumers pay off their balances, save money on fees and interest and build their credit over time.
The best part of this mobile finance app is that it improves your financial health. It ensures that you can monitor your spending without having to log in to a separate app. The app adds up your totals automatically in the wallet app and allows you to view your spending by the week or by month. It also allows you to spot trends in your spending so you can decide if you want to change them.
#2. PocketGuard
PocketGuard is one of the best budget management apps out there. Its winning formula is its ease of setup, simplicity, and ability to curb your spending. Through its dashboard, you can easily track spending and monitor balances across accounts. The app also boasts several attractive ancillary features such as weekly reports of the breakdown of your top spending categories.
The free version of PocketGuard will help you identify unwanted subscriptions and save on recurring monthly bills. If you would like to create personal spending categories, split transactions, or keep track of any cash you receive or spend, you’d need to upgrade to PocketGuard Plus for $4.99 a month or $34.99 a year.
#3. Mint
Although the third on our list, Mint is one of the most used mobile finance apps you can find on the mobile stores – it boasts of close to 25 million registered users. The beautiful things Mint can do for you include providing spending alerts, bill payment push notifications, and free credit monitoring from TransUnion.
Mint is one of the oldest budgeting apps and yet the most reliable. With Mint, you can sync your financial accounts and then monitor transactions, track spending by category, and keep an eye on cash flow. All these in one dashboard, plus the setup is pretty streamlined and all services are free.
#4. YNAB
YNAB is the acronym for ‘You Need a Budget.’ This app is a personal finance app that’s based on the rules of giving every dollar a job, embracing your true expenses, rolling with the punches, and aging your money.
Through these YNAB rules, this mobile finance app helps you build a better budget as well as gain control of your spending. You can import transactions from your checking account and apply them to each budget category to get an accurate picture of your spending.
You can also keep a balanced budget with YNAB by adjusting budget categories if you accidentally overspend or underbudgeted for a certain category.
#5. Personal Capital
To talk about wealth management, you have to mention Personal Capital. This mobile finance app allows you to manage your assets and investments along with your everyday spending accounts. The beauty of Personal Capital is that it integrates with more than 14,000 financial institutions, making it easy to link your accounts within the app.
With Personal Capital, you can track your portfolio by account, asset class, or individual security. Its tablet version built-in intelligence allows you to discover opportunities for diversification, risk management, and any hidden fees you may be paying.
You can also compare your portfolio to major market benchmarks with Personal Capital. This guides you to stay on track to meet your investment goals. The icing on the cake is that Personal Capital provides registered financial advisors who can provide you with advice tailored to achieving your goals.