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one-stop shop providing services ranging from payments and financial services to communication and retail services will likely be challenging given the different cultures and nationalities that make up the region’s user base. Th e f i rst k n ow n s u p e r- a p p i s WeChat, which was launched in 2011 as a messaging platform by Chinese technology giant Tencent. A decade later, WeChat is a portal to more than three million third-party “mini-programs,” a platform from where users can hail a ride, make cashless payments or access retail services. Biro said super apps are a new revenue stream for banks and they must enable responsible finance, which involves teaching, educating, notifying, warning and enabling alternative options to complete a transaction instead of immediate payments using cash.
Other high-profile super apps in Southeast Asia include South Korea’s Kakao, Japan’s Line, Vietnam’s Zalo, Singapore’s ride-sharing platform Grab and GoTo in Indonesia. Meanwhile, Dubaibased Careem has expanded beyond its initial ride-hailing business to become a ‘super app’ that includes food delivery, grocery shopping, cleaning, shipping and bike rentals. From a data ownership perspective, Ansari highlighted that it is challenging for incumbent banks to start their super banking apps. Ansari imagined RAKBANK creating a super banking app and a customer that also uses Emirates NBD coming along and plugging their account into a RAKBANK account and then collecting data, a move that will be unlikely. The rise of open banking around the world is enabling super-apps to use financial data from multiple sources
to target customers’ needs and deliver financial products. Open banking requires a robust, agile, and scalable IT architecture to enable API integrations with multiple entities. Its implementation promises to create a new data-sharing infrastructure, which will form the basis of a much richer range of services and products across the whole of financial services. The emergence of fintech, combined with economic shifts and regulatory impacts, has changed the game for all financial services providers. The milliondollar question is what is holding banks back from leading the innovation race? Traditional financial institutions say the major challenge they’re facing is that fintechs often don’t have to meet the same regulatory and compliance requirements that they do. This allows fintechs to move more nimbly into some fields of business. mea-finance.com
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