UK Consumers Trust PayPal More Than Banks to Provide Super App, Study Finds

The U.K.’s appetite for a super app is huge.

That assertion is according to a recent report published by PYMNTS in collaboration with PayPal, titled “The Super App Shift: How Consumers Want To Save, Shop And Spend In The Connected Economy.”

The study, which is a survey of consumers in the U.S., Germany, Australia and the U.K, found that 70% of consumers in the four countries were interested in such an app, with U.K. consumers having the highest level of interest.

Read the report: The Super App Shift: How Consumers Want To Save, Shop And Spend In The Connected Economy

The questionnaire defined a super app as one that “provides a user interface through which consumers can shop, order food, check social media, bank and so on — all within a single solution. It can help solve the current ecosystem’s decentralization problem and address consumers’ universal desire for consistent, secure, and frictionless interactions throughout the pillars of their lives.”

Among the countries surveyed, the U.S. leads in terms of the share of respondents who reported being very or extremely interested in a super app (44%). But when including those who reported being slightly or somewhat interested, the U.K. takes the lead, with 74% of consumers reporting some degree of interest in a super app.

What’s more, consumers in the U.K. were found to have the highest number of connected devices, with an average of 5.5 each. This corroborates the findings of the PYMNTS “Benchmarking the Digital Transformation” report, which found the U.K. to have some of the highest rates of internet connection and smartphone penetration in the world.

Read more: UK Leads Europe in Internet Access, Second in CE Index, Study Finds

Clearly then, with a digitally connected populace and high demand for a marketplace of services and offerings, the U.K. presents huge opportunities for companies like PayPal that have entered the super app territory.

In fact, when asked who they would most trust to provide a super app, the U.K. was the only country studied where more people listed PayPal as their most trusted provider, compared to others who listed banks.

Still a Long Way to Go

But although PayPal’s super app potential is strong in the U.K., if the bar for a super app is measured by the way people in China use WeChat, or the way people in Southeast Asia use Grab, the company certainly has a long way to go.

More on this: Grab Results Show Super Apps Taking Hold

For example, while the PayPal product Venmo has a large presence in the American payments market, it is not available in Europe. Instead, a wide variety of digital payment methods are in use and a high level of variation is observed from country to country.

However, as an eCommerce payment method, PayPal is well established in the U.K., where it is the most popular digital wallet for online transactions, PYMNTS’ research reveals.

Get the report: Benchmarking the World’s Digital Transformation

Moreover, PayPal’s point-of-sale (POS) products, developed under the Zettle brand, are widely used in the country. And alongside the Netherlands and Sweden, the U.K. is one of the first markets where Zettle has launched its readerless POS solution, Tap-to-Pay.

More on this: UK SMEs Give Customers the Cheap, Contactless Payments They Want

So in a nation that clearly has an appetite for a unique portal providing a broad range of virtual products and services, PayPal is better positioned than others to become the U.K.’s preferred super app.

Whether it will is yet to be seen, but the stage is certainly set for Brits to embrace greater app integration and the convenience of a single app that caters to a range of social and economic needs.

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