Fintech Industry Insiders Detail Top ‘Super App’ Candidates in the US

• Industry insiders shared their views on which tech companies could achieve super app status in the US.
• Cornerstone Advisors’ Ron Shevlin doesn’t think the US will have a single super app.
• Shevlin named Walmart and Amazon as potential leads while Rapyd’s Larry Lee named Venmo.

The race to build a so-called financial super app is well under way, and some industry insiders are already placing their bets.

A super app is essentially a one-stop shop for users’ financial needs and beyond, offering multiple services and products – including savings, investment and shopping tools – all in one place.

While super apps have yet to fully catch on in the US, despite efforts from payment giants Block and PayPal, they are extremely widespread abroad.

China has led the way with the existence of WeChat and Alipay, giving users a place to send and receive money, while also purchasing goods and services such as travel couriers and food delivery right from the platform. Latin America is following suit with the rise of apps such as Colombia’s Rappi and Argentina’s MercadoLibre.

Ron Shevlin, head of research at consulting firm Cornerstone Advisors in Scottsdale, Arizona, envisions Walmart being the closest to building a super app in the US.

Walmart made headlines in 2021 when it announced plans to launch a finance company. The retail giant followed that up by poaching high-profile executives from Goldman Sachs and buying Even, an earned salary access startup, and One, a neobank.

“The core is the low-income consumer base that might be interested in getting more services from Walmart in terms of financial services, healthcare,” Shevlin said while speaking on a panel at Money20/20 USA in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

To be clear, Shevlin believes there are still big problems with a super app catching on in the US because culturally, Americans like to have more than one thing to choose from.

However, he believes there “may be segments of the population that would be more willing to accept some kind of superapp environment.”

Shevlin added Amazon as another company that could take on super-app status. What makes Shevlin pretty sure that Walmart and Amazon have a chance is that the business-to-business functions, like advertising functions, are both built out to support a super app-like infrastructure.

They “don’t just throw services out to consumers,” Shevlin said.

Shevlin also believes there could be a dark horse in the mix: buy-now-pay-later startup Klarna.

Fintech’s BNPL offering is a stepping stone to providing credit cards, Shevlin said. And on top of that, Klarna has a bank and has acquired financial services such as BillPay. The company also acquired APPRL to give retailers the ability to manage their relationships with influencers and other creators on the platform.

But fellow panelist Larry Lee, the global head of financial networks at Rapyd, a company that provides back-end payment infrastructures, disagreed, adding that brand recognition is more important to American consumers.

Instead, he’s betting on Venmo.

“They have 80 million users. They’re kind of a social payment app. There’s an opportunity, I think, for them to become a super app. They’re actually already doing that with crypto-financial services,” Lee said.