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The traditional banking system focused on the traditional population and understated Gen Z. This digital generation, constituting about 32% of the global population, has become the primary target of digital financial services and super apps. The Gen Z group with a purchasing power of more than $143 billion hold the potential to sway a super app’s success. A major growth factor of these super apps is merchant offers.
A Gen Z member may or may not be born with a golden spoon but is certainly born with a digital device! They learnt to control their world on their fingertips, even during the global recession of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic. This current state of affairs paved the way for a virtual life and super apps that offer a one-stop-shop for all their needs.
While staying inside the house, the average time spent on smartphones has surged globally. And there has been an increased traffic on super apps, especially in the eastern part of the world. This trend of creating a complete ecosystem of services is being adopted in the West by companies like Google, PayPal, Amazon and many more. So, super apps have come to dominate the present marketplace, displacing retail stores and cards with their mobile offerings.
Different generations come with different needs and mindsets. To attract this demographic, a super app needs agile technology and innovative strategies to onboard customers, market its products and services, and maintain customer loyalty. And this seamless experience is integrated with appealing merchant offers. Wouldn’t you prefer using an app that offers you vouchers or discounts on your future purchase? Moving beyond the conventional points-and-rewards approach to AI-driven personalized product offers, location-based discounts, flexible payment options, and integration with social media offer an edge to these new platforms.
Partnerships with big and small-scale merchants not only foster the growth of super apps but also provide a wider reach to these merchants, creating a win-win situation. By integrating the so-called third-party programs into an expanded ecosystem, super apps like WeChat, Grab, Paytm, and GoJek dominate the market. These platforms not only pull in merchants but also provide an opportunity of messaging consumers, highlighting their USPs and offers. By opening its platform to merchants, WeChat has increased its footfall to over 1.25 billion monthly active users. PayPal also focused on its merchant value chain capabilities in its February 2021 investor presentation.
In this quest, anticompetitive practices, threats to privacy, and potential favoritism to some merchants continue to worry the merchants who want to be a part of this ecosystem. Merchants are also concerned about getting tied closely to a single platform and its impact on their strategy. And that’s where Pulse iD helps, by democratizing merchant-funded offer space. It embeds merchant offers from regional and global brands inside the loyalty programs of banking systems, FinTech platforms and DeFi projects. To learn more and to try the platform for yourself, visit https://www.pulseid.com.
