Super apps get a shrug in the states
The Future. Even though super apps are super popular in China, the American market may not really have a place for them, highlighting the inherent differences between the tech industry in both countries. That could spell trouble for the fintech platforms — PayPal, Affirm, and Klarna — that are pushing to create their own to help jumpstart growth.
Faith in fragmentationIn Forbes, Cornerstone Advisors chief research officer Ron Shevlin breaks down some reasons why super apps — “enclosed experiences that make it easy to accomplish a wide variety of tasks, as long as the tasks occur within the walled garden” — have an uphill battle for American adoption.
In China, super apps, such as WeChat and AliPay, became popular because the smartphones in the country didn’t have the power necessary to run 40-50 separate apps. So, super apps were able to do more with less.
But Americans have no problem running all those separate platforms and actually prefer to do it that way — Americans are skeptical of, say, a bank running food delivery and ride-sharing.
Additionally, Americans are concerned about data privacy and security, so having one mega platform controlling all these various types of information could raise red flags.
And with Big Tech run by a few “oligopolies” (Apple, Google), a company like PayPal making a super app would have to contend with all the services they already offer.
Shevlin does think that one company may have a shot at making a super app that people will want to use — Walmart. Why? Because the company has a large, low-to-middle-income customer base that is relatively underserved by Big Tech. Plus, making a walled-garden ecosystem is actually the company’s bread and butter.
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