There is a Super App-shaped hole in the U.S., and earlier this year, F.T. Partners published a report titled The Race to the Super App that examines the most eligible companies to fill the gap.
The report details three major categories of potential Super App contenders in the U.S., including challenger banks, large fintechs, and big tech companies/ retailers. Here is a breakdown of U.S. players in each category:
Challenger banks
- Upgrade
- Dave
- Avant
- Varo
- Chime
- MoneyLion
- Current
- Mission Lane
- Oportun
Large fintechs
- PayPal
- Square
- Robinhood
- Figure
- Betterment
- H&R Block
- M1 Finance
- TrueBill
- American Express
- Wealthfront
- Affirm
- SoFi
Big tech companies/ retail
- Amazon
- Apple
- Uber
- Walmart
The report takes an extensive look at the super app industry and details two Super App models. The first is the winner-take-all model. In this approach, the Super App provider begins by offering a banking service and then expands to provide a wider range of services, aiming to eventually become users’ primary financial services tool. The second model is an aggregator approach in which the Super App provider acts as a marketplace that connects users to existing financial services.
Ultimately, banks have a choice to leverage either the winner-take-all model, in which they will build their own Super App to compete with third party players, or to take a hybrid approach in which they both host their banking products on third party marketplaces and offer third party tools to their clients within their own ecosystem. In the former approach, banks will incur competition from major players. However, when taking the latter approach, banks risk relinquishing the primary banking relationship status with their customers.