Complete Guide to Become A Super App

Your go-to guide for understanding super apps, which apps exist in market today, and strategies to become a super app.

What is a Super App?

A super app is a platform developed by a company that offers different services under one umbrella. The rise of super apps is changing the way the world does business; the single purpose of such apps is to bundle multiple functions into one experience. You can order a ride; buy groceries, order food online, or split bills all in one platform.

In China and Southeast Asia, the rise of super apps has created noise from e-commerce, trading, entertainment, and transportation and has improved day-to-day life in that part of the world. They include super apps like Grab, WeChat, GoJek, Alipay, and Paytm. Supper apps are taking off because of the convenience they bring, as they save space on Smartphones and save time as there is no constant need to keep changing from app to app to make a transaction. Let us a look at some examples of super apps.

Grab

Grab operates in Southeast Asia. Its core thesis is a recurring app used in ride-hailing services across the region in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, Thailand, and Myanmar. The app has partnered with the best service providers to offer GrabPay, GrabFood, and GrabExpress, to name a few.

GoJek

This model is a mobile payment platform that offers financial services in its app that includes ride-hailing, food delivery, payments, and activities and still operates in Asia. It has partnered up with local banks to ease costs and provides you with a transaction history to help you manage your finances.

WeChat

WeChat operates in china; it started as a messaging app but slowly adapted to other services like ordering food, sending money to friends, hailing a taxi, and reading news. For an average Smartphone user in China, it is hard to imagine life without the most incredible super app like WeChat that has existed for more than ten years.

Now that you understand what a super app is, how then do you create one? Here are some guidelines to help you strategize and develop an app.

Strategies to developing a Super App

1. Create a Strong Core Use Case

Recognize the needs that are to be met in the economy and then solve the specific problems. When a super app is being created, it has to offer more than one service and has to be helpful to the general population and make it successful in the markets. Most of the services provided by these apps involve finances and banking, transportation, entertainment, and delivery services.

For example, Alipay, China's leading consumer company, was launched in 2004 as a payment arm for Taobao for the e-commerce platform that Alibaba operates in Asia; a year later, it became China's largest online shopping market. Start an app with a strong core use case and then slowly add more services to it that are helpful and build an innovative app from the ground app.

2. Get a sound payment system.

A sound payment system is critical to removing friction; without a good payment model, a user cannot make payments for purchases made and services requested. It helps a user capture their transaction data, and it should be able to create room to offer customers discounts on services acquired.

A problem with payments led to the creation of GoJek that partnered up with local banks to create a payment system. Hence, GO-PAY was launched as a digital wallet to meet transactions, and the GoJek super app was formed on these grounds.

3. Additional relevant services from the core use case

Apps should not stray too much away from their core case; however, you should add more services to the app to create an ecosystem of services provided, and hence this makes the need for an app and translates into a super app.

For instance, within the WeChat ecosystem in the Chinese market, many mini-apps have been built on top of their ecosystems; for example, King Power in Thailand is the largest chain of duty-free stores.

Are you ready to give super app creation a chance?

1. Introduce a marketplace gig economy that uses localized payments either in a country or a region and creates business relationships between the sellers and buyers. This is an excellent platform to emphasize the need for a super app that cuts across all services provided.

2. Engage the people responsible for running the trade economy: the seller, buyers, contractors, and the banks used for payment either on credit or debit. Leverage digital wallets and the experience offered on these platforms.

3. Add incentives to the already existing services on the app; these rewarding features should enhance the app's usage among the online trading market.

4. Continue adding services to the already existing ones and introduce new modes of payments. Think on a global scale as you create the app, consider targeting the consumers on social media platforms like Facebook and tap on Google trends to help you create a super app

5. Create a super app model to better the user experience; if you are not a tech genius, you may want to invoke a person who can write a code that can hold the data on the multiple benefits it can offer. Those features fit into a phone.

Super apps have become entrenched in the lives of millions of users in emerging online markets, offering new services like food delivery and accepting credit card from users to pay into the companies. Creating these apps can make life easier for customers and may end up appending services like the banking systems; once upon a time, banks were the only way to make payments, but with the arrival of fintech, everything has changed.

Create a social network that enables the app to go viral because of all its benefits and include mini-apps to support the leading cause of why you created the app. The ride-sharing service has been at the forefront of helping deliver any assistance required, promoting growth.

New-age fintech has not only made life easier, but it has also promoted centralization in the online marketplace. For instance, several goods and services, how they are acquired and delivered: the means of payment and communication services such as messaging can be found all in one place and accessed through a mobile phone.

About XanPay

XanPay offers innovative FinTech solutions with the ability to easily integrate with the existing infrastructure. From easy on-boarding to cross border payments, we can assist with the needs of enterprises as well as individual merchants. Our solution helps your business reach new clients, enter new markets, and grow your scale of cross-border payments with localized payment solutions.