Mobile app security for banking, fintech and payments
Protect banking, fintech and payment applications against reverse engineering, fraud, malware, runtime attacks and unauthorised modification, with enterprise-grade mobile app hardening and runtime protection that regulators recognise.
The most targeted sector, on devices you do not control
Financial services is the most attacked industry on mobile, and the threat sits both outside the organisation and inside it, on employee and customer devices. A breach of your application is the gateway to financial gain for an attacker, whether through stolen data, fraud or extortion.
SecIron strengthens banking app security through mobile app hardening and a consolidated security architecture: assess the build, harden the binary, and monitor every session in the field, from one codeless integration.
What attackers do to financial mobile apps
Financial applications are targeted by attacks that exploit the application code, the runtime environment and the user’s device. Understanding these threats is the first step toward resilient mobile security.
Reverse engineering
Attackers decompile APKs or IPAs to understand application logic, find the checks that run on the device, and discover embedded secrets and API keys.
Code tampering and repackaging
A modified build with a check disabled or a payload added, re-signed and redistributed under your name. This is how cloned banking apps are made.
Runtime manipulation
Tools such as Frida, Xposed and Magisk hook functions and modify app behaviour while it is running on a rooted or jailbroken device.
Fake apps and overlays
Cloned applications and banking trojans that draw a fake login screen over yours, drive the interface through accessibility services, or capture the screen during authorisation.
Fraud at scale
Emulator farms, multi-instance tools and GPS spoofing that make automated account abuse look like legitimate customer transactions to your fraud engine.
Regulatory exposure
Mobile banking rules require strict controls and evidence: BNM RMiT, MAS TRM, OJK, BSP, Taiwan FSC and HKMA CFI, alongside PCI DSS, SOC 2, PDPA and GDPR.
Protection built for mobile financial applications
Secure your mobile banking apps against reverse engineering, fake apps, screen-jacking and more, and give customers confidence that their financial data and privacy are protected.
Mobile financial apps are under constant attack, and the threat keeps growing. Hardening makes the app resistant to tampering; runtime protection detects the attack on the device; monitoring gives your security team and your auditor the record of what happened.
The majority of mobile financial apps are vulnerable to security flaws
We conducted our own penetration and vulnerability testing of mobile financial applications across Asia and found that most mobile financial applications on the market today are vulnerable to cybersecurity breaches.
Benefits for financial institutions
Strengthen the security of your mobile applications while safeguarding customer trust, reducing fraud risk and enabling secure digital banking experiences.
Comprehensive security protection
A complete range of security solutions, simplified and automated, covering both Android and iOS mobile financial applications with platform-agnostic data insights and a highly responsive support team at your disposal.
Meet industry compliance standards
Security controls that align with OWASP MASVS and the mobile channel considerations referenced in BNM RMiT, MAS TRM, OJK, BSP, Taiwan FSC and HKMA CFI guidance, while helping you meet PCI DSS, SOC 2, PDPA and GDPR obligations.
Increase customer trust and confidence
Static and dynamic protection, runtime application self-protection (RASP) and real-time threat monitoring protect your app and sensitive data through four stages: prevent, detect, respond and predict.
Build and protect your brand
Customers use your mobile platform trusting that their data is protected. Keep loyal customers and win new ones by providing robust security with threat monitoring and prevention in place.
Audit-ready evidence
A timestamped incident log of detected threats, affected devices and the responses taken, exportable to your SIEM and ready for the examiner’s next question.
Codeless, CI/CD-ready
Protection applied to the compiled build in your pipeline, so hardening ships at your release speed rather than on a separate project timeline.
Three solutions for the whole lifecycle
Assess before release
Automated vulnerability assessment against OWASP MASVS, with remediation guidance for every finding.
Harden the binary
Multi-layer, codeless hardening: obfuscation, encryption, anti-tampering and RASP, applied to the compiled app.
Monitor in the field
Real-time detection and response across every session, with the audit record your regulator asks for.
Financial services mobile app security, asked and answered
Why is mobile app security important for financial services?
Financial institutions manage highly sensitive customer information, payment data and financial transactions. Mobile app security protects applications from reverse engineering, runtime attacks, fraud and unauthorised access, reducing the risk of data breaches and financial loss.
How does Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) improve banking app security?
RASP continuously monitors the application’s runtime environment to detect threats such as debugging, code injection, instrumentation frameworks, rooted devices and memory manipulation. When suspicious activity is detected, the application responds immediately to prevent exploitation.
Can mobile app hardening prevent reverse engineering?
Hardening significantly increases the effort required to reverse engineer an application by protecting code, resources and sensitive logic through obfuscation, encryption and integrity verification. No solution can guarantee complete prevention, but it makes attacks substantially more difficult and costly.
Will mobile app hardening affect application performance?
Modern hardening is designed to minimise performance impact while providing robust protection. SecIron measures the impact on your own app during the proof of concept and states it on the record.
How can financial institutions protect mobile apps from fraud?
By combining mobile app hardening, runtime protection, anti-tampering, root and jailbreak detection, secure API protection and continuous monitoring to detect and respond to malicious activity on the device, before the request reaches your fraud engine.
Is mobile app hardening compatible with CI/CD pipelines?
Yes. SecIron integrates with modern CI/CD pipelines, so application protection is automated as part of the software development lifecycle without extensive code modification.
How does SecIron support BNM RMiT, MAS TRM and other regional requirements?
SecIron supports organisations in addressing the mobile application security considerations referenced in BNM RMiT, MAS TRM, OJK, BSP, Taiwan FSC and HKMA CFI guidance: device binding, anti-screen-capture, malware and rooted-device detection, and data encryption, with the incident record examiners ask to see.
Resources for banking and fintech security teams
Related reading
Ready to launch a secure banking app?
From deployment to security and beyond, SecIron takes you from visibility to action. Bring us your app and we will show you what an attacker sees, then what they see once it is protected.
End-to-end mobile application security. Assess, harden and monitor Android and iOS apps with codeless integration.
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