Skip to main content

Will Twitter, PayPal and Walmart compete to launch America’s super app?

Tim Harned Contributor
Tim Harned is a managing director at Progress Partners. He has had an M&A and capital advisory career spanning more than 30 years making strategic transactions for Fortune 500 and early-stage enterprises.

Ever since Elon Musk’s “be careful what you wish for” acquisition of Twitter, speculation about America’s first homegrown “super app” has soared.

In October, Musk tweeted: “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.” According to Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood, Musk is “thinking about a super app like WeChat Pay.” Keep in mind that Musk founded X.Com and merged it with Confinity to create PayPal.

For context, China’s WeChat launched as a messaging service in 2011 and has since become a combination of Meta, Apple Pay, Venmo, Amazon, Uber, Robinhood, Rocket Mortgage, Kayak and Healthcare.gov — as well as more than 3.5 million partner “mini programs” that operate inside the app. PayPal and Walmart have been teasing their own versions of financial super apps since at least September 2021 but with much less fanfare.

Twitter, PayPal and Walmart could find themselves competing to monetize the financial lives of millions of people. That raises several questions: Why is now the moment for super apps in the West? How should we assess progress toward a super app? How are Twitter, PayPal and Walmart chasing this idea? Which one has the best odds of winning, or is there actually room for several leaders?

Why now?

Though popular throughout Asia, Latin America and Africa, super apps have failed to materialize in the U.S. and Europe. If Twitter, PayPal and Walmart are going to change that, we must ask why.

The benchmark of a fintech super app is how much financial activity it can concentrate into one ecosystem.

“Super apps took hold in Asia because Asian consumers owned under-powered smartphones that weren’t conducive to managing 40 to 50 separate apps,” according to Ron Shevlin, chief research officer at Cornerstone Advisors. In the U.S. and Europe, smartphones didn’t have the power or memory challenges typical of the hardware in less developed regions, so super apps were never a necessity.

Moreover, as Axios argues, data privacy fears, strict banking regulations, and Apple and Alphabet’s control over payments in their mobile operating systems have deterred would-be super apps.

A super app doesn’t solve an obvious problem for the Western consumer besides providing convenience and security (both debatable). That said, you could argue that such an app could bring finance, banking and credit-building opportunities to the underbanked or unbanked, who may be either excluded from mainstream financial services or fearful of them.

So why now?

Twitter has lost the digital advertising field to Alphabet, Meta and Amazon. PayPal is overdependent on payment processing, which is increasingly a crowded, competitive space. Walmart, always a step behind Amazon in digital, is overdue to try something its Seattle rival hasn’t tried.

Super apps represent a fresh and new pasture for these behemoths.

The process

Will Twitter, PayPal and Walmart compete to launch America’s super app? by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/NupbnGd
via https://ift.tt/rwkpiPA
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WORKING 2.0 No Recoil File For PUBG | Anti-Ban File

 WORKING 2.0 No Recoil File For PUBG | Anti-Ban File - techy teacher 2.0 No Recoil File For PUBG Howdy Buddies! We are back with new theme on PUBG versatile 2.0. I genuinely want to believe that you all update your PUBG App in light of the fact that on 11 May PUBG new update has been shown up, and pretty much every client update it. As you most likely are aware my site is the best wellspring of hacking and breaking, on my site you get the most recent reports on game hacks with reasonable recordings. Today, I give you the most recent 2.0 No Recoil File For PUBG. This update is truly astounding, PUBG 2.0 report a few new and intriguing elements with regards to this update. PUBG presents new livik map and in this guide we see a great deal of new things. This new guide is entirely unexpected and PUBG add a few games in it. In this guide, you additionally appreciate soccer challenge and gather coins in remuneration to purchase plunder. How about we examine every one of the new elements in c
Post a Comment
Read more

Lyft hails new leadership, layoffs come for Lucid and Waymo retires its self-driving minivan

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here —  just click The Station  — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.  Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.  This past week, I drove a 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4XE Summit 4×4 (a press vehicle courtesy of Jeep) to Moab, Utah ahead of the Easter Jeep Safari event to check out what the Stellantis brand has been working on. Jeep, which hosts media in March every year for its annual off-roading and concept roadshow, put electrification front and center. While the seven concept vehicles (all of which I drove) were equipped with an array of powertrains, it was hard to ignore the variety of plug-in hybrid and battery-electric setups. There were some fun internal combustion-powered vehicles, like the Jeep Scrambler 392 concept equipped with a 6.4-li
Post a Comment
Read more

Meta Connect 2024: What to expect, including Quest 3S and new AR smart glasses

Meta Connect 2024 is so close, you can almost taste it. Launching during the week of Sept. 23, the social media giant is expected to rollout hardware and software goodies that will intrigue VR gamer enthusiasts, AI aficionados, and smart glasses devotees. But what, specifically, does Meta have up its sleeves? We have a few guesses based on credible reports. What to expect at Meta Connect 2024 Last year, the Meta Quest 3 was announced in early June, but it got its full reveal at Meta Connect 2023. The headset boasted a sleeker, more comfortable design, as well as new AR capabilities, that made it more appealing than its predecessor. Once again, for Meta Connect 2024, the social media giant is expected to drop a new VR headset, but it's not necessarily an upgrade over the Quest 3. Meta Quest 3S Rumor has it that Meta is planning on revealing a cheaper, more budget-friendly version of the Quest 3 called "Quest 3S." Tweet may have been deleted Whether it was intent
Post a Comment
Read more