The rise of the super app
These are platforms with a single login, providing access to a range of goods and services and backed by a digital payment system
Even if you don’t know what a super app is, you’ve probably heard of China’s WeChat and Alipay — two of the biggest players in the market. Owned by Tencent, WeChat started as a messaging app but is now seen as an "app for everything".It has more than 1.24-billion monthly active users and more than a billion mini programs, third-party offerings made possible with open banking and APIs (application programming interfaces).Super apps are platforms with a single login providing access to a range of goods and services backed by a digital payment system.But Gour Lentell, CEO of Datafree, says super apps are not well understood in the SA market."Right now, it’s simply a buzzword people are using to describe their own apps, but there isn’t anyone in SA there yet."A super app provides a multifunctional, fully rounded experience to users, allowing them to do what they need to do every day without leaving the app," he says.One app headed that way is Moya, a zero-rated messaging app that could ...
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