Meta Positioning WhatsApp To Be a Super App

By John P. Mello Jr.

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.”

https://www.technewsworld.com/story/meta-positioning-whatsapp-to-be-a-super-app-179818.html