Without much fanfare, Meta has been quietly enhancing the
capabilities of its WhatsApp messaging software, which could transform it into
a super app.
While super apps have gained traction in Asia, they haven’t
caught on in the West. Apps like WeChat in China, Grab in Singapore, Gojek in
Indonesia, and Paytm in India offer users a bundle of services in a single app
— such as messaging, payments, social media, shopping, booking, food delivery,
and ride-hailing services.
“Rather than replicate WeChat’s model in full, Meta appears
to be abstracting the behaviors that matter most,” Paul Armstrong, the founder
of the TBD Group, a technology consulting firm, wrote Tuesday in City A.M., a
London-based business newspaper.
“China’s WeChat integrates messaging, payments, e-commerce,
social media, and even government services into a single environment,” he
wrote. “WhatsApp is not built to host that degree of functionality, nor would
most Western regulatory environments allow it.”
“Meta is instead layering in lightweight versions of those
capabilities,” he continued. “Each integration is designed to be contextually
relevant, low-friction, and invisible when not needed.”
“The result is not a Western WeChat clone,” he noted, “but a
modular system with a similar behavioral footprint, transactional, sticky, and
increasingly agent-mediated.”
App Store Barriers Limit Super App Growth
Ross Rubin, the principal analyst at Reticle Research, a consumer technology advisory firm
in New York City, noted that the idea of a super app coming to the United
States has been around for some time.
“It’s been challenging, in part, because unlike in China,
where there’s a fragmented app store landscape, here you have two major
players, both of whom have their own entrants in many of these categories,
making it a bit more challenging to launch such an app,” he told TechNewsWorld.
For example, if a super app wanted to offer ride sharing
natively, it would lock horns with the likes of Uber. “That’s hard because you
have to basically get users off the Uber app and onto the super app,” explained
Malik Ahmed Khan, a technology equity analyst at Morningstar Research Services in Chicago.
“The super app either has to have its own ride service or
partner with Uber,” he told TechNewsWorld. “But why would Uber want to give up
its users and book through another app when it can maintain them on its own app
and be in charge of that customer account?”
Adam Landis, head of growth at Branch,
a mobile analytics software company in Mountain View, Calif., agreed that app
stores can be a barrier to the rise of a super app.
“In Asia, super apps are deeply integrated into daily life,”
he told TechNewsWorld. “In the U.S., Apple’s restrictive App Store policies —
limiting payments, third-party app distribution, and ecosystem layering — have
stifled similar development. But Apple’s loosening grip may open the door for
true super app adoption.”
“AI is reshaping digital commerce,” he added. “By building a
self-contained commercial ecosystem, Meta can harness behavioral data and
transactional intent to drive the next evolution of AI-powered commerce.”
“AI is the accelerant,” he continued. “Platforms like OpenAI,
with persistent context and multi-service interfaces, could become super apps
in disguise, handling discovery, decision-making, and transactions
autonomously.”
Whom Do You Trust?
Khan pointed out another challenge facing a Meta super app.
“If Meta had all these different services integrated into one app, there could
be some resistance from a data privacy perspective,” he said. “People might
ask, ‘Do I want Meta to know when I’m ordering an Uber or know where I am
going?'”
“Consumers like things to be easy, so if an app comes along
that reduces the friction to make payments, it may be attractive,” added Jennifer Golbeck, a professor at the University of
Maryland’s College of Information Studies. “At the same time, consumers are
rightfully concerned about privacy and security. Do they trust this company to
take care of their credit card and banking information? Will they be charged
for something unexpectedly? Is there a chance for fraud?”
Golbeck argued that for new super apps to overtake existing
mobile payment options, they will need to offer something new or more
convenient. “If I were interacting with people on X or in WhatsApp often enough
to make payments there, I may be inclined to use their payment method a lot,
and then to use it in other contexts as well,” she told TechNewsWorld.
“The real question is if there is enough demand for either
app,” she continued. “Meta tried to launch WhatsApp payments in India without
much success. They did face some regulatory hurdles, but once those were
removed, they did not make much headway in gaining market share over
established systems like Google Pay.”
“I think whether Meta or X can create real demand for their
payment system, given the current state of mobile payments, is the real
question,” she said.
There might be a demand for a WhatsApp super app in
developing markets where bandwidth and app storage are more limited, but in
Western markets, resistance is real, added Chris Sorensen, CEO of PhoneBurner,
a power dialer and CRM solutions company, in Laguna Beach, Calif. “People are
much more privacy conscious and wary of giving one company too much control,”
he told TechNewsWorld.
“It is also important to note that super apps require broad
integrations and behavior shifts that certainly won’t happen overnight,” he
said.
Meta’s Data Strategy With WhatsApp
The consumer demand question is fascinating because it varies
significantly by market maturity, noted David Bader, director of the Institute for Data Science
at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, in Newark, N.J. “In emerging
markets, super apps solve real infrastructure problems — fragmented payment
systems, limited internet access, multiple service providers,” he told
TechNewsWorld.
“In mature markets like the U.S., the value proposition is
less clear,” he continued. “Western consumers already have specialized apps
that work well. The resistance often comes down to trust and privacy concerns,
which are amplified when you’re asking users to consolidate their digital lives
into a single platform controlled by one company.”
“From a technical standpoint, Meta is absolutely positioning
WhatsApp to become a super app,” he added.
“The integration of business services, AI-powered agents, and
the gradual introduction of payment systems all point to a platform
consolidation strategy. What’s particularly interesting from a data science
perspective is how Meta is leveraging its AI capabilities — specifically the
Llama models — to create contextual experiences within conversations. This
isn’t just feature addition. It’s algorithmic orchestration of user needs.”
“Meta’s motivation is fundamentally about data and control,”
he said. “As a data scientist, I can tell you that fragmented user experiences
create fragmented datasets. By consolidating interactions within WhatsApp, Meta
gains unprecedented visibility into user behavior patterns across the entire
customer journey — from discovery to purchase to support. This creates
tremendous competitive advantages in AI development, targeted advertising, and
predictive analytics.”
