Super apps like Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat have become super successful in Asia.
Their market dominance in turn has made Western entrepreneurs “super” interested in building their own, perhaps none more so than Elon Musk.
The South African-born tech titan has recently added more fuel to the fire by replacing the longtime bluebird logo of his social media platform Twitter with the stylized “X” of the “everything app” he is rumored to be planning to build.
“You have to start with what would it even mean for them to become a super app. I think a lot of people focus on how X might do micro payments and [integrate that functionality],” Amias Gerety, partner at QED Investors tells PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. “But I think, actually, the better place to start is, how many people actually use the platform?
“Journalists and politically engaged millennials are not necessarily the right place to start in terms of brand permission to start to take over people’s lives [with super app capabilities],” Gerety explains. “Does X even have the brand permission to get into people’s wallets?”
Most super apps are built upon existing social networks, incorporating new features and services to enhance the user experience, and rely on trust as an authorization point because many of those features and in-app optimizations are centered around payments. WeChat and Alipay, for example, revolutionized the way people interact and transact by integrating payment systems into their platforms.
After all, no matter what it is users want — at the end of the day, they are going to need to pay for it.
But does Musk’s X have what it takes to become a true game-changer in the digital landscape?
As Gerety says, to make the leap into the super app real, the platform must be able to convincingly solve for a real-world, right-now problem.
“What’s the size of the hole that you need to fill in someone’s life? What’s that job to be done?” he asks.
The super apps dominating the market today found hyper-scalable success by realizing there was a problem to be solved by introducing payments into networks that had already been established.
But X’s passionate yet relatively small user base may not be able to provide the necessary level of trust and acceptance for financial transactions.
Beyond that, “In the U.S., there is lots of competition. Other platforms are [competing] to do those jobs for you,” Gerety adds.
Musk’s platform’s potential to fill a significant void may be limited. With the need for a large and engaged user base, as well as the crucial brand permission to enter people’s wallets, X certainly faces an uphill battle.
The app economy is well developed, and there are a lot of apps that consumers use. Around 70% of consumers rely on apps for various transactions and activities, from shopping and paying bills to banking and checking transactions, making digital platforms an increasingly integral part of daily life.
Still, consumers are increasingly seeking a more streamlined experience, desiring an everyday app that combines services to revolutionize the way they connect, share and transact instead of switching between multiple platforms.
“Maybe X becomes the place where we finally conquer social shopping because payments are embedded. Maybe the everything app is the everyday app. It’s really going after Amazon, not going after WeChat or WhatsApp or Snap,” Gerety says.
“Nobody has figured out social shopping, and that is a big idea.”
Building trust will be crucial for any aspirant hoping to become the go-to app for consumers. That’s because another significant aspect of the digital landscape is the concept of an identity layer.
Existing identity verification systems provided by companies like Facebook, Gmail and Microsoft are not highly trusted or secure. This leaves room for a big idea around identity validation and security. Elon Musk’s approach of allowing people to pay for validation can be seen as a potential solution in the context of identity verification and could position X as a self-contained ecosystem where users enter the digital front door.
Still, as Gerety notes, “There’s no KYC [know your customer] for that blue check validation, and allowing people to pay for it went in the exact opposite direction, lowering the trust factor.
“By comparison, you can start to ask whether Apple is a super app company,” Gerety says. “And while in everybody’s mind the answer is no, realistically, it might be yes. … Apple is one of the few brands that is high on delight and high on trust. And so, again, Apple doesn’t describe itself as a super app, but it’s the closest thing we have in the U.S.
“Most companies, most startups succeed because they can build trust, ubiquity and need across a very narrow range of use cases,” he adds. “How are you going to build an app that has trust, ubiquity, and need across everything? That’s a tall challenge.”
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