New Survey Finds 3 in 4 Consumers With Strong Demand for Super Apps

Modern life is complex — and consumers want an app for that. Recent research reveals that most consumers in Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States are ready for an all-in-one solution for everyday life: a single dashboard to manage communications, purchasing and banking. PYMNTS’ research found that a minimum of two-thirds of respondents in these countries are interested in the integration of a super app into their daily lives.

In “The Super App Shift: How Consumers Want To Save, Shop And Spend In The Connected Economy,” a collaboration with PayPal, we gauge consumer interest in a super app and review how such an app might transform the way consumers manage their personal and digital interactions. The report is based on a census-balanced survey of 9,904 consumers in Australia, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. conducted between Jan. 11 and Jan. 31.

The Everything App Solution: Consumers Are Ready for Less Friction in Their Lives

Consumers’ overwhelming interest in a single app for their most vital and personal tasks is logical. Not only must they navigate uncertainty and complexity in the private and public spheres, but they also face a proliferation of solutions that may add rather than remove friction from their lives. That interest is not confined to the affluent or to the highly tech-savvy, either: It stretches across all income brackets.

Consumers exhibit significant interest in a super app, with 72% of all respondents at least “slightly” interested and 25% “very” or “extremely” interested. Generally, the level of interest in a super app rises with respondents’ income and level of tech integration, but 63% of consumers in the lowest income bracket are interested in a super app as well.

A super app may solve consumers’ biggest problem: how to make their lives function more efficiently without adding app after app. A core advantage of a super app is its elegance in taking a tangled thread of apps, websites and channels and spooling them into a single, centralized experience.

One App to Rule Them All

For our survey, we described a super app as follows: “A super app provides a user interface through which consumers can shop, order food, check social media, bank and so on — all within a single solution. It can help solve the current ecosystem’s decentralization problem and address consumers’ universal desire for consistent, secure and frictionless interactions throughout the pillars of their lives.”

Survey respondents made it clear that they were highly interested in these apps’ ability to automate repetitive administrative tasks while providing transparency and control over key purchases and activities.

We found that respondents are most interested in using a super app for grocery, restaurant and entertainment purchases. Specific personas of consumers heavily correlate with certain super app integrations — for example, more than 90% of consumers primarily motivated by convenience would integrate a super app into any area of their lives.

Consumers’ interest in a super app underscores their desire to spend less time managing connections to banks, shopping platforms and entertainment services. To learn more about how consumers plan to use a super app in their daily lives, download the report.