Super apps in consumer banking – what role does open banking play?

Imagine having a single app that gives you access to your bank accounts, allows you to pay bills, borrow money, manage your insurance policies, keep an eye on your investment dashboard, and more!

Super Apps

A Super app is a single portal that manages a variety of features and services designed to cater to users’ daily needs. A super app is technically a grouping of several specialised applications that create an ecosystem of completely integrated third-party services with the help of a payment system. Because the user can stay within the app to complete a variety of tasks, this creates a mini operating system that functions like a digital assistant.

Super apps in Consumer Banking

Super apps are a rare achievement in the banking industry. On the other hand, fintechs quickly realised the potential of using AI-powered financial assistants to enable ultra-personalization and budget automation. They are eager to create Super apps that can make use of aggregators with well-established online marketplaces to link users to a system of digital banking and financial services that already exists.

An ideal financial Super app is a flexible digital banking and payment solution that offers financial services beyond simple payments. Customers must be able to complete the majority of their daily tasks using the app, including paying bills and other fees, making purchases, transferring money, booking tickets, subscribing to services, managing investments, and buying and managing insurance. It’s interesting that the list can keep adding features to boost customer engagement and satisfaction.

Recent studies show that 50% of customers interact with their bank at least weekly using a mobile application or website. This shows that customers and businesses today expect their banks to be easily accessible and responsive to their digital needs. According to experts, any provider can become a super app that meets the growing demand for convenience in the banking process by fusing embedded finance and open banking, rather than just a collection of disjointed or open-ended financial services.

How open banking powers super apps?

Interoperability in the banking industry is built on open banking. For beginners, the Open Banking system uses APIs to give access to consumer banking, transactions, and other financial data from banks and NBFCs to third-party financial service providers.

The Open Banking system gives the platform a number of options for tailoring financial services to each user’s specific needs. It uses advanced technologies such as AI, ML, and Data Analytics to maximise personalization and build customer-relevant products. Using advanced technology to analyse data and develop customer-centric products/services fosters a data-sharing culture and data-driven decision-making across the ecosystem.

Customers can access Open Banking through the app’s digital wallet to check account balances, make payments, track recent transactions, and perform other traditional banking functions. Using a bank’s app is no longer required. Furthermore, as Open Banking expands into open finance and open data, Super apps will be able to connect with a diverse set of partners, allowing them to launch new products faster and broaden their customer base.

API Inference

The API infrastructure is core to embedded finance and open banking. A good API provider incorporates complexities such as disputed payments and connecting to multiple suppliers into the API system. As a result, intended apps can interact in a variety of ways, resulting in the development of a comprehensive ecosystem. Furthermore, APIs enable Super apps to handle large amounts of interconnected data at multiple levels while maintaining the user experience. APIs are used by fintechs to seamlessly integrate functionalities into cloud-native apps. To simplify consumer banking and enable end-to-end customer-centric retail offerings, they use a full-fledged, mobile-first, customizable API stack.