Top 5 Ways Fintech Applications Benefit From Realtime

The fintech industry has exploded over the past few years, transforming how we (and financial institutions) manage, move, and invest money. From digital wallets to peer-to-peer lending and robo-advisors, fintech applications are redefining the financial services landscape and forcing traditional banks to innovate or risk losing their market share and profitability.

However, as the fintech sector expands, so does the pressure to drive innovation and provide services that keep pace with today’s users' expectations. Nowhere is this more evident than in our appetite for immediacy. We want our banking and financial user experiences to mirror our other daily digital interactions, where we expect instantaneous actions without any delays.

So it’s no surprise that one of the frontiers of fintech disruption is providing faster, more seamless user experiences—after all, the less friction there is in spending money, the more we spend, right?

Real-time technology has been the key to many fintech firms being able to deliver on their vision. Let’s look at 5 use cases where they have managed to do this:

Instant feedback and alerts on transactions

A common user experience pitfall for fintech solutions is performing the application's core functionality within the mobile app only to go off-app to share separately that an action was taken. Case in point: peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions.

P2P transactions have become commonplace, from paying for services and splitting restaurant bills to casual consumer-to-consumer (C2C) commerce. While strides have been made in the past decade in making transactions real-time across disparate banks, verifying and sharing transaction data has not been as smooth.

Large parts of the world still rely on screenshotting a transaction page and then switching to a messaging app to share the screenshot as an image. Worse still, turning your phone screen toward the payee to flash the transaction page is a process subject to the potential risks of fraud.

Instead, turning this into a real-time and in-app transaction has the benefits of providing trust and a smoother experience. Some companies provide an in-app chat-style interface that shows transactions between participants and can even initiate a transaction through the chat interface. All of this can be done with strict regulatory compliance and by optimizing the software development cycle, reducing time to market.

And if you need more proof that bringing a chat-style interface in-app is a good idea, consider that WhatsApp is moving into the payments space and that US regulators have moved to forbid banks from sending business-related information outside of work channels for security reasons.

Connecting payment terminals in real-time

The gold rush of fintech startups has resulted in a fragmented market with many players in each category, all trying to carve out a space for themselves. Any serious app eventually needs to be well-connected to other apps to expand its market and operational efficiency.

The interactions between Payment Gateways, Point of Sale (POS), and Payment Terminals are especially complex. In most cases, POS software is ultimately the main system, as it holds vast amounts of data for all possible items purchased and processed and records the transactions.

However, it’s not a Payment Gateway, so it integrates with Payment Gateways to process the financial transaction. While payment gateways sit in the cloud, transactions happen in-store on payment terminals. Because these terminals are not integrated with the POS, they must be integrated with the Payment Gateway in the cloud for data processing. So, the payment gateway needs to tell the payment terminal in real time how much it needs to charge.

Lest we forget:, while all this is happening, a real customer stands at the cashier, card in hand, waiting to pay. Any delay here would result in a poor customer experience and, worse, in balking at the end of the line, where customers just leave and don’t complete their purchases. This is all lost revenue.

Real-time price updates and other alerts for crypto exchanges

Crypto exchanges form the backbone of the cryptocurrency market. Compared to regular exchanges, crypto exchanges notably trade 24 hours a day and often provide connectivity options to interact with the exchange.

These APIs often include regular REST APIs, but providing real-time streaming information about price updates as a ticker—as well as information about asks and bids over and under the market price—helps build robust applications. They provide a wealth of information for those looking for financial advice and making ‌informed decisions about trading on the exchange.

Providing this information could make the difference between choosing to trade on the platform or another exchange. Thus, this should be considered a critical feature. PubNub’s real-time streaming capabilities are well-proven in this field and are used by crypto exchanges to satisfy critical compliance and regulatory requirements.

Solving real-time decisioning challenges

Fintech companies often face challenges in making swift, data-driven decisions, particularly for fraud detection and personalization. Traditional systems may not have the speed or flexibility to analyze user behavior and respond to critical events in real-time.

To address this, fintech platforms need solutions that offer real-time, predictive analytics, decision-making capabilities, and artificial intelligence and machine learning to track user activity, detect anomalies, and make immediate adjustments. This approach provides valuable insights, minimizes risk, and enhances user engagement, improving overall business performance.

Enhancing risk management

Risk management is a cornerstone of the financial sector, particularly when handling transactions, user authentication, and sensitive financial data. Fintech platforms must quickly perform risk assessments to identify and respond to threats like fraud, data breaches, and account takeovers.

Solutions that leverage real-time data monitoring, machine learning, natural language processing, and AI can help platforms detect unusual patterns in customer behavior and flag high-risk activities as they occur. This proactive approach enables automatic interventions—such as account freezes or additional verification steps—to ensure compliance, minimize losses, and build user trust by maintaining a secure ecosystem.

The fintech industry thrives on speed, scalability, reliability, and seamless user experiences. Real-time data is at the core of delivering these capabilities. Whether providing instant transaction feedback, connecting payment terminals without delays, or ensuring real-time crypto price updates, fintech companies need a dependable solution to maintain customer satisfaction while keeping up with user demands and regulatory requirements.

PubNub’s real-time APIs empower fintech applications to deliver these services with confidence. If you want to enhance your fintech platform with robust real-time capabilities, PubNub can help you stay ahead of the competition. Sign up for a free PubNub account today and start building the future of fintech.