Tamwily: auto-trading platform. Case study

New technologies have constantly changed our approach in finances: from Apple Pay to mobile banking. Both Android and iOS apps help us receive, exchange, and transfer money conveniently. But what about loans and investing? Investing was one of the things that millennials didn’t like about the world of finance. Recently we partnered with partner-centric auto finance International Company based in Saudi Arabia and developed auto-trading platform for Individuals and Corporates, as well as small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The app itself was based on already developed website. The Tamwily app lets users opt for appropriate car and make loan easy, even for people with no previous experience.

What does the Tamwily app do?

• Tamwily provides people with up-to-date market data.
• Tamwily notifies users about updates in the vehicle market: price, make, model, year etc.
• Tamwily account allows users to trade or buy without waiting for approve as most of loan services provide.
• Tamwily app approves payments immediately without physical visiting of bank and insurance services.

A selection of vehicles that can be bought through Tamwily is quite wide and includes offers by automobile brands BMW, Mini, Rolls Royce, Land Rover, Jaguar, Hyundai, TATA, and Ankai.

What makes Tamwily so popular?

• It’s well-designed
• It’s cost effective: it provides commission-free trades
• It’s secure: all sensitive personal data is encrypted.

Apps like Tamwily seem very attractive to a wide range of entrepreneurs since they bridge the gap between professional auto dealers and people with the aim to buy high quality vehicle.One of the key selling points of Tamwily is that the app offers commission-free trades. The primary source of revenue for Tamwily is their premium offering for big corporations. Tamwily  collects interest on the cash and securities in corporate accounts in the same way that banks collect interest on their clients’ cash deposits. The amount of money a user can pay monthly for car depends on the size of a user’s portfolio. Thanks to possibility to separate payments and make a loan without physical visiting of bank, app quickly gathered a huge number of visitors and increased its number of customers.

What challenges did Tamwily face?

1. UI/UX

We made design the first priority because we realized that if the app wasn’t really simple and sleek, it would fail. The mobile first approach meant that designers had to simplify certain graphics in the app. For example, Tamwily does not use candlestick graphs even though they are very common in financial and loan apps. In apps like Tamwily it’s worth considering whether or not you really need to provide all the finest details about daily changes in value. Since auto-trading platform is for Individuals and Corporates, thus, information reflected in detailed candlestick graphs is not not especially relevant for Robinhood users.

2. A perfect product–market fit

There’s nothing new about auto trading, but giving access to vehicles gallery through a mobile app in the same way that Uber democratised car sharing: today, you don’t have to own a Bentley to ride in one. People immediately loved the idea of a simple trading app that doesn’t require commissions and is available to pretty much anyone – and that’s how Tamwily got its initial attraction. The popularity of this service is proven by the fact that Tamwily’s creators (website first, without our participation) ended up with more than one million people on their waitlist before the product was ready for launch. Apps like Tamwily have to clearly state what they offer to their potential customers. This value proposition should look something like this: We make vehicle trading accessible, and will help you invest your money in a smart and fun way. Trading apps like Tamwily have the same appeal as online banking apps: they make users feel in control of their finances and let them monitor what is happening with their investments at all times.

3. An appropriate architecture for trading software

Tamwily app development comes with a number of technical challenges. First of all need to run a lot of tests. Because of limited market hours, however, it might not always be convenient to use real-time data. Another challenge when developing trading apps has to do with providing immediate responses – apps like Tamwily have to show stock market prices in real time.

Some of these difficulties will require complex technical solutions, but very often answers come in form of third-party APIs that can be integrated with your trading app. Our team used E*TRADE API because it is useful if you need to:

• manage user’s account data
• retrieve option chains
• search for exchange
• get quotes and manage orders.

E*TRADE offers some SDKs too, which could be useful for the development of trading app like Tamwily, but the SDK documentation is quite short and needs to be more detailed for it to be truly useful. The API documentation is much more detailed and hands-on.

4. Admin panel

Initially Tamwily app was as additional tool for users to make payments using mobile device only. As it was developed after the already launched website, we composed one admin panel for both web and mobile apps. We’ve gathered the options to the most essential component :

• List of requests - a list of users requests that can be sorted through and bid on by contractors;
• User Details – contains complete information about the user: name, order status, current bids, category of vehicles he bided.
• Loan Dashboard – a screen that appears only after the client and the contractor have agreed on the details, and the loan has been initiated.
• Quotes – a list of requests that a particular contractor has accepted.
• Active Loans – a list of loans that are in progress.
• Payments - a list of active payment to a user. This board contains menu about the amount of made and future payments.

In conclusion...

Developing an app like Tamwily requires overcoming various challenges – both technology and marketing related, but since vehicle trading is a very topical field for investment, developing a product like Tamwily can be a good investment in modern technology.