Top 5 Fintech App Features to Drive Engagement

How we chose these five features

Each feature on this list had to pass four tests. It gives users a reason to open a banking, investing or wallet app when they have no transaction to make. It can run inside a regulated product, with controls over who can post, what gets reviewed before it appears, and who can speak with authority. It produces first-party signal that product and compliance teams can act on. And it is something social.plus ships today and documents in its developer docs, so every capability described here can be checked.

Disclosure: social.plus publishes this blog, and all five features are part of the social.plus platform described in our product overview. That last test is a deliberate scope choice. We only list what we build and can verify, so features we don't offer, such as biometric login, budgeting tools or support chatbots, are out of scope here, even though many fintech apps need them. Statistics are named with their source and year in the text.

The five fintech app features at a glance

Young adults already learn about money socially, just not inside the apps that hold their money. In Gallup's survey of 2,036 U.S. adults, 57% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they rely on friends and family for financial advice, 42% said they use social media, and 23% said they follow personal finance content creators (Gallup, 2025). The five features below bring those habits into the product, where the app can moderate them, learn from them and keep the attention they generate.

The features work best in combination. Groups and the feed give users somewhere to talk, chat and live sessions give them moments to come back for, and expert profiles give the conversation a source of authority. Our earlier post on how social features change fintech app engagement covers the broader case for adding them; this list focuses on which ones to build and what each one requires.

1. Topic groups for money goals, strategies and assets

A single feed for every user of an investing app turns into noise quickly. A first-time saver, a dividend investor and a crypto trader want different conversations, and they contribute more when the people around them share the same goal. Topic groups solve that by giving each audience its own space: a group for building an emergency fund, one for long-term index investing, one per asset class, one for users who just opened their first account. This mirrors where young adults already go for guidance: friends and family remain the top source of financial advice for 18- to 29-year-olds in the Gallup data above.

Groups can be public and discoverable, or private with join requests and invitations, which suits a group reserved for a premium tier or a pilot cohort. In a fintech app, the more important setting is who can publish. Investment groups and communities can be set up so anyone can post, so every post waits for moderator approval, or so only admins post, which turns a group into an announcement channel. social.plus's own developer guidance recommends the review-before-publish setting for communities with compliance requirements, finance included, together with at least two moderators per community and guidelines shown during the join flow.

To run groups well, start with a handful your team can actually staff. Write the rules before launch: no personalized recommendations, no referral codes, no requests to continue the conversation in an outside app. Then decide which groups need every post reviewed. A group for new investors usually does; a group discussing feature requests for your app usually doesn't. Organizing groups by strategy, asset type and experience level, the structure we outline for an in-app community for fintech, keeps each conversation relevant to the people in it.

2. A discussion feed with comments, reactions and polls

Most users of a finance app never post anything. A feed still gives them a reason to open the app: other users reacting to a market move, a question someone answered well, an explainer from your in-house team, a savings milestone a user chose to share. An activity feed with comments and reactions turns that content into a habit, and reactions give the quiet majority a way to take part without writing a word.

In-app polls lower the bar further, because a poll asks for one tap. Ask which topic the next live session should cover, how confident users feel about their emergency fund, or which feature they want next. In social.plus, polls are published as feed posts with two to ten options, single or multiple choice, and they close on a timer or when the poll owner or an admin closes them; users can change their vote until then. Results appear as live counts, and every vote is first-party data about what your users want to learn.

The compliance line for a feed is about what users post and what your app appears to endorse. Users will post screenshots of balances and statements, so decide whether account details may appear at all, and remove posts that expose them. Keep polls to opinions, education topics and product feedback; a poll asking which stock will outperform next quarter can read as a collective recommendation. Pair the feed with notifications for replies and mentions, since a reply to a question a user asked is one of the clearest reasons for them to come back.

3. In-app chat: 1:1, group and broadcast

Chat covers three different jobs in a fintech app, and each needs its own rules. Private 1:1 conversations connect a user with a support agent, an advisor or a coach without sending them to email or a phone queue. Group chat gives small cohorts a real-time space, such as a savings challenge or a first-time investor program. Broadcast messages reach every user with announcements, such as a rate change, a new product or planned maintenance.

In-app chat keeps those conversations, and the context around them, inside the product. social.plus supports three channel types for this: conversation channels for private 1:1 or small-group chat, community channels for public or private group rooms, and live channels for commentary during a livestream or event.

Private messages are also the easiest place for a scam to hide: a stranger offers trading "signals" in a public thread, then asks to continue one to one. The safer rollout order is staff-to-user chat and broadcasts first, then group chat in moderated rooms, and user-to-user direct messages last, if at all, limited to accounts your team has verified. Moderators can mute a user for a set time, ban them from a channel or from the whole app, and delete individual messages, and admins can set per-user message rate limits to slow spam floods.

One detail matters for regulated teams: a channel ban deletes that user's messages, so if your compliance team needs a record of what was said, capture it before the ban. Conversations between users and licensed staff may also fall under your firm's rules for keeping records of communications, which is a question to settle with your compliance team before launch.

4. Live market sessions: livestreams and scheduled events

Live sessions give users a reason to show up at a specific time, which no static screen can do. An earnings-week Q&A, a monthly market outlook from an in-house analyst, a session on tax deadlines before year-end, an onboarding walkthrough for new investors: each one is a recurring date in the user's calendar that happens inside your app instead of on someone else's channel.

Two features make this work together. A scheduled event carries the title, time, cover image and RSVP, so users can commit in advance and your team can see demand before the session starts; events can be virtual or in person. An in-app livestream then carries the session itself, with co-hosts, live chat, reactions and viewer counts, and the recording stays available for playback afterwards for users who missed it.

For a regulated app, the host list is the main control. Put licensed staff or approved partners on stage, not whoever asks. Use the pinned message in the live chat for the risk disclosure that applies to the session, keep moderators in the chat to remove messages and mute users, and treat the recording as part of the record your compliance team may want to review later.

5. Expert and creator profiles users can follow

Young adults already follow finance creators: 23% of 18- to 29-year-olds told Gallup they follow personal finance content creators on social media (Gallup, 2025). Inside your own app, the same behavior can point to voices you have vetted, such as an in-house analyst, an educator, a partner firm, or experienced users your team has recognized.

User profiles give each of them a home: a bio, their posts and comments in one timeline, follower and following counts, and a follow button. Accounts can require approval before someone follows them. For official communication, a brand account with a verification badge posts and replies on behalf of the company, so users can tell a real announcement from a user who only sounds official.

The regulatory side is real. The UK Financial Conduct Authority's guidance on financial promotions on social media states that unauthorised persons, such as influencers, who promote a regulated financial product without approval from an FCA-authorised person may be committing a criminal offence (FCA, 2024). Before you give anyone an expert badge, define how you verify them, what they may and may not say, and what disclosure their posts carry. Keep identity checks in your own systems: social.plus identifies each user by a stable ID your app provides, and its docs advise keeping credentials, email addresses and private profile data in your own system rather than in social profile fields.

What it takes to run these features in a regulated app

All five features put user-generated content next to people's money, and fraud is the risk that deserves the most care. U.S. consumers reported losing $7.9 billion to investment scams in 2025, about half of all reported fraud losses that year, with an average individual loss above $10,000. In fiscal year 2025, social media was the contact method with the highest aggregate reported losses, at over $2 billion (FTC, 2026). A community inside your app should be harder for scammers to work than an open social platform, and that comes down to four controls.

Layered moderation. In social.plus, AI moderation scans posts, comments and messages after they are published, scoring text for hate, sexual content, violence and self-harm and flagging links and references to people for review; images can also be blocked before they go live. Finance-specific abuse, such as unlicensed advice, pump-and-dump posts or fake support accounts, falls outside those generic categories. Cover it with review queues for posts and comments, user flagging, roles that limit who can post where, and server-side pre-hook checks (an enterprise feature) that can allow, modify or deny an action before it is processed. Content moderation tools then give your team one place to work through everything that was flagged.

Known users. Every account in the community should map to a customer you already know. Use your own stable user ID, keep KYC data in your own systems, and show display names chosen for the community rather than legal names.

Data you own. Conversations in your app are first-party data. Decide early where it goes: dashboards for daily monitoring, and raw exports and webhooks into your own systems for retention, audit and analysis.

Analytics that surface problems early. Topic and sentiment analysis show what users are confused or frustrated about, which is often the first sign of a fee question, a broken release or a coordinated campaign. Engagement analytics built on community conversations turn that signal into product, support and moderation decisions.

How to choose where to start

You don't need all five at once. These decision rules help with the order:

• Start with topic groups and the feed if your users already discuss your product or the markets elsewhere. You are moving an existing conversation, not starting one.
• Start with live sessions if you have analysts or educators on staff. One recurring session gives the rest of the community a schedule to form around.
• Add chat in stages: staff-to-user chat and broadcasts first, moderated group rooms next, and user-to-user messages only with verified accounts and a moderation team in place.
• Add expert profiles once you have written down how you verify experts and what they may say.
• Staff moderation before launch, not after the first incident. Review queues only protect users if someone works through them.

None of these features creates engagement on its own. They create the opportunity, and the incentives, programming and moderation your team puts behind them decide whether users come back.

Frequently asked questions

What features drive engagement in a fintech app?

The features that give users a reason to open the app between transactions: topic groups, a discussion feed with comments, reactions and polls, in-app chat, live sessions with scheduled events, and expert profiles users can follow. Each adds something new to see or a moment to return for. How much engagement they produce depends on how well they are moderated and programmed.

Can a fintech app let users discuss investments without giving financial advice?

Yes, with clear rules and consistent enforcement. Common approaches are to ban personalized recommendations and promotions in the community guidelines, review posts in groups for new investors before they appear, label user content as opinion, and give expert badges only to people the firm has vetted. The exact rules depend on where you operate, so write them with your compliance team.

Should a fintech app allow direct messages between users?

Only with safeguards in place. Private messages are where scams are hardest to see, so a cautious rollout starts with staff-to-user chat and broadcasts, then opens user-to-user messages to verified accounts once moderators, rate limits and reporting are working.

How do you keep scammers out of an in-app finance community?

Tie every account to a verified customer, limit who can post and who can start private chats, use AI moderation to flag suspicious links and content, and review posts in high-risk groups before they appear. A brand account with a verification badge also helps users tell official messages from impersonators.

Building fintech app features that keep users coming back

social.plus provides all five as engagement infrastructure for consumer apps: groups, feeds, polls and profiles through the Social SDK, chat through the Chat SDK, livestreams through the Video SDK, plus events, moderation and analytics, available as SDKs and APIs or as pre-built UIKit components. The experiences run inside your app, under your brand, and the data they generate is yours. That removes the need to build the underlying systems yourself; your team still decides the rules, the programming and the moderation that make a finance community worth returning to. If you're weighing which feature to launch first, talk to sales about your compliance requirements and existing stack.