RISE OF THE SUPER-APPS: THE BIG QUESTION They’re our virtual valets, poised to fulfil our every whim… we asked Gijsbert Pols from Adjust where the super-apps’ super-powers might take them next Anyone with kids – and many without – will be familiar with Iron Man’s virtual assistant, Jarvis – and will no doubt have mused on how wonderful it would be to have a Jarvis at their own beck and call. Could fiction now be about to blur into reality with the rise of so-called super-apps and numerous financial firms, big tech providers and even traditional retailers queuing up to develop the one that trumps all others when it comes to fulfilling our every wish? The explosion in both popularity and capability among Asian super-app frontrunners like AliPay and WeChat Pay has proved the possibilities, believes Gijsbert Pols, lead product strategist for marketing analytics specialist Adjust, which supports app developers in better understanding their target audiences to thereby increase reach. At the heart of all super-apps, and their reason for being, of course, is payments the gateway to all the associated experiences they have evolved to provide. Alipay, for
example, started life as a digital wallet, later adding everything from e-commerce to stock exchange trading. The recent Industry Analyst Consensus Report from research house CB Insights, describes mobile wallets as ‘one of the fastest-growing industries in the world’, predicting explosive growth from $1trillion now to $7trillion by 2027. It also suggests that what it calls ‘super-wallets’ will replace single-function digital banking and payments solutions, and add functionalities from AI-powered digital assistants to digital IDs and document stores, with ‘a growing number of companies striving to become the go-to app for all things finance’ and so have ‘substantive impact on individuals’ day-to-day lives’. Companies vying to offer what the report
describes as ‘a connected ecosystem where users can manage payments, savings, investments, crypto, budgets, loans, insurance and more, all in one place’, include fintechs like SoFi, which started out as a student loan provider and added banking, investment, insurance and credit products, and Venmo, which has added a cash account, a debit card, a credit card, in-store QR payments and crypto investments. Then, of course, payments giant PayPal now provides access to high-yield savings accounts in collaboration with Synchrony Financial, as well as a bill management tool covering pay early as well as loyalty and rewards functions. In fact, life could get tricky for traditional financial services players that fail to embrace this trend, given the report’s prediction that ‘super-apps will be the dominant fintech strategy of the next decade, and pose a growing threat to legacy financial players as well as single-function fintech apps’. These players also face stiff competition from the likes of big tech, not to mention mobile technology providers, also keen to leverage their phenomenal user bases to gain a foothold in the super-app and super-wallet space. Adjust’s Mobile App Trends 2021: A Global Benchmark Of App Performance report found the pandemic had acted as a further springboard for super-app culture, concluding that ‘as lockdowns were
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