Building a Powerful Fintech - Here's What You Need to Know

The first impression of your brand is the most important one, especially if you're a fintech company.

Successful fintech companies are notorious for systematically building their brands because they know their customers seek trustworthy companies to handle their money -- the first impression either gets them a customer or loses one.

A strong thought-out brand makes everything easier. It helps you build and connect with an audience and communicate your value more effectively.

Many elements make a brand powerful. Fintech branding is about creating a company that feels trustworthy, genuine, recognizable, and is consistent at every touchpoint.

It all boils to a well-done brand strategy. A successful branding strategy should be able to transcend time and place, challenge the present moment in time, and create a lasting impression with the audience. Fintech companies have to understand what consumers want from them at any given moment and ensure trust and reliability to maintain relevance.

Every company needs to have a name, however, not all companies think about naming as an effective use of branding. The name and logo are two things people associate with your company, so you want to make sure that both are memorable, attractive, and communicate core company values.

Multiple factors should be taken into consideration when naming a fintech company. The name should be easy to pronounce and remember. Make sure it works well within your target market and spoken language, check if it does not create any double meanings. A general rule of thumb for fintech - a short, clear, easy to spell name, that is easy to search on google.

We had a client who came to us looking for help. They had built an amazing product, yet they weren't gaining traction. Sounds like a growth problem, until we saw the product name. It had an intentional spelling error which once googled was auto-corrected. If the customer heard it vocally, he wasn't able to find it online. Sounds like a naming problem.

When naming your company, make sure you check if the name isn't trademarked. It is becoming increasingly difficult these days to find a unique name that isn't already trademarked by other companies in the same industry or niche as yours. Search for the name on Google, check with the Patent and Trademark Office.

And finally, once you have your name selected and cross-checked for trademark issues, look for domain name availability.

With fintech, the key thing to consider at every branding stage is to consistently reinforce trust and reliability, therefore a short, clear domain name and extension can play a huge role in this. To find an available domain name can be difficult and if you are looking for a *.com extension the task could be almost impossible. Therefore you might need to consider whether you should go with a different extension, like .io, .finance, or other.

The strategy is the building block of the company's brand foundations. It is a detailed plan that outlines the company's vision, mission, personality, and what it is going to achieve in the industry.

A good brand strategy is a holistic understanding of what you are as a company, what do you stand for, what future do you want to create, your guiding principles, and how you treat your customers.

With our clients, we start the creative collaboration with a brand strategy workshop. Our framework helps founders and teams align the company's mission & vision, define audiences, and brand personality. It also provides a forum to discuss and shape the company together.

Every team member needs to have a clear understanding of their company's unique brand positioning and strategy – this is not something that can be left to chance or put on hold until the business is more established.

To achieve the holistic view of the brand you need to understand and outline 4 brand strategy blocks:

The logo design is the first visual connection with the customer. It is the face of your company.

A logo design makes the first impression on your behalf and the customer will likely remember it every time he thinks, talks, or writes about the brand and experience associated with it. A good logo tells a thousand words.

Over the decades working with technology and fintech companies I have identified what a good logo needs to be:

The rule of thumb for creating a memorable fintech logo is a combination of iconography and typography. This approach is the most suitable for the digital-only fintech industry. Typically, the brand launches online and it has the challenge to create meaningful connections with customers fast. Your logo needs to tell a story in an instant.

The right iconography creates a smart visual connection that hints at what the company does, while typography ties a name to the visual connection. This approach hits two birds with one stone.

The one thing I want to leave you with is when designing a strong fintech logo design - you want to tell one story of your company, not three.

Don't try to fit everything into one symbol.

Designing a fintech brand identity can be a daunting task. Thoughtful branding can make or break a company. Investments in this area will reap the benefits of increased customer loyalty and higher conversion rates, but getting this right is not an easy feat.

There are many elements to keep in mind when designing an identity for an innovation product and each one plays an important role in the entire process of creating a trustworthy, reliable brand experience. The designer needs to consider the target audience and what visual language would resonate with them, then translate that into a system of signature graphic elements, iconography, typography, color palette, etc.

A final step of fintech brand development is to outline all created brand assets into an actionable style guide.

A brand guide is a document providing instructions on how to use created brand assets. Traditionally, the style guide includes guidelines on how to use the logo design, typography, color palettes, and brand system for different purposes, including designing identity items. The guide is essential for ensuring consistency across multiple channels, providing the information needed to create further design assets.