53% of Consumers Trust Banks to Provide Super Apps

The super app shift favors the banks, with decades of experience and long-lived relationships with customers. The super app shift favors the FinTechs, with the ability to innovate in a world that is constantly, and increasingly, going digital.

The deciding factor, of course, lies with the consumer. Trust is what ultimately sways the individual to lodge their loyalties with a particular provider.

And at least for now, though it’s early innings yet, the advantages lie with traditional providers, namely, the banks.

The desire for a super app, PYMNTS and PayPal have found, seems to be universal. But to make the leap from interest to intent use those “digital front doors,” consumers need to see that security is inextricably linked to convenience.

In “The Super App Shift: How Consumers Want to Save, Shop and Spend in the Connected Economy ”  the data show that consumers want a simple interface that connects a broad range of activities, where shopping can flow seamlessly into ordering food, where checking social media might give way, on a whim, to checking one’s checking account (and savings balances). Consumers, of course, want frictionless experiences on demand, and at the same time want to know that someone’s got their proverbial backs.

International Appeal

The joint efforts between PayPal and PYMNTS analyzed the responses from 9,904 consumers in Australia, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. The study found:

• The appeal of the super app transcends borders. And consumers want to get spending right out of the gate.Regardless of where these consumers live, a significant number of consumers — cumulatively more than 96 million — would be willing to use the super app immediately, upon availability. There’s significant, pent-up spending power in the mix, too, as we’ve estimated that the total annual spending power of day one users stands at more than $3 billion.

• Convenience and security are the top demands. The consumers most interested in embracing the super app also value the convenience the high tech offerings can bring — but following close behind is the desire for security. Roughly 50% of our consumers have stated that reputation and security-related confidence are key factors in generating trust — especially since 45% of respondents have said that they remain “very worried” about being hacked when using a super app. For the banks, there’s an additional benefit here, as 41% of consumers have said they would probable engage in more banking activities if they had access to a super app that would make it easier.

• Banks are clearly the dominant provider of choice. The data show that more than half of the respondents trust the banks to provide those super apps — and in fact 30% would embrace the traditional FI as the “most trusted” provider. PayPal cements its place as the second-most-trusted.