Are banking apps the new Super Apps?

Consumers increasingly choose digital banking channels to check their balances, initiate payments, apply for loans, and complete other interactions with their banks.

This trend creates opportunities for banks to embed new features and services in their apps on top of traditional banking services.

One promising innovation is to enable consumers to manage their interactions with merchants directly from their banking app. Examples are managing digital receipts, refunds, loyalty and rewards, and subscriptions.

These developments resemble the emerging idea of super apps, which aim to simplify the user experience by offering multiple services within one app, thereby reducing the need for users to download and manage multiple apps.

Super apps especially appeal to younger generations who are used to accessing everything through their mobile devices and are most prevalent in the Asian market.

In a research study commissioned by Ethoca, Aite-Novarica conducted a consumer study to gauge consumer expectations of banking providers and how consumers would like to engage with merchants and their bank to better manage their (post-sale) interactions with merchants.

The survey was conducted among consumers in eight countries in Q4 2022.

Key findings:

• Globally, digital receipts are popular: About half of consumers who have accepted digital receipts prefer them over paper receipts, while about 40% prefer having both. Usage of digital receipts has already reached maturity: 68% of consumers have given their email or phone number to a merchant to receive a digital receipt.
• In most countries surveyed, consumers prefer to receive digital receipts in digital banking apps rather than via email or text: Only in North America (the US and Canada) do consumers say they don’t have a clear preference. Major factors for the higher interest in digital banking channels are having all the receipts in the same place and being faster to find them.
• Consumers like digital banking features: Consumers say they like having new digital banking features to manage their interactions with their favourite brands directly from their online or mobile banking app. Still, there is significant variation by country. Singapore, Brazil, and Spain appear to be the best markets to launch such services.
• Ease of use is important to consumers when offered new digital banking features: Baby boomers and seniors have the strongest opinion that ease of use is very important. The survey also shows that ease of use is even more important for features that banks offer than those merchants offer.
• Consumers would switch banks for new features: A significant share of consumers would switch or consider switching banks if their banks did not offer the features and services surveyed in this study.

In short, consumer interest in new features and services provided through digital banking is high.

There appears to be a real opportunity for FIs and merchants to work together and enable consumers to manage their FI and merchant interactions on a single platform.

For FIs and merchants alike, such a platform would enhance the customer experience, reducing attrition and winning new business.

However, the infrastructure to deliver all of this is not yet available. FIs and merchants should collectively agree upon how this would be accomplished.