Elon Musk has best chance to build American super app, says Fintech Exec

• Elon Musk is to buy Twitter by the October 28 deadline set by a judge.
• The tech billionaire previously tweeted that Twitter will accelerate plans for an “everything app.”
• Rapyd CEO Larry Lee says Musk has the best chance to create a super app from scratch in the US.

Elon Musk’s deal for Twitter is in the final stages, but at least one fintech insider believes he has the potential to build something even more all-encompassing than just a social media platform.

Larry Lee, Rapyd’s global head of financial networks, said Elon Musk is the “best chance” the US has to create a so-called super app from scratch.

“Elon Musk is the kind of leader who is programmatically crazy, so he could do something like that from scratch,” Lee said while speaking on a panel at the Money20/20 USA conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Lee said he could see Musk creating an app where many of his businesses come together on one platform.

“You can imagine him driving self-driving cars — he already owns it. So you order it on your app, and then you’re going to have food delivered before you go to SpaceX to go to the moon.” Lee said.

“It could be a super app,” he added.

A superapp is a mobile or web-based application that acts as a one-stop shop for consumers’ financial and commerce needs. Although the concept has yet to catch on in the US, it is popular in countries such as China, which has WeChat and Alipay, and Argentina, which has Mercado Libre.

But the key to becoming a super app is to have reasons for the user to use it daily or even several times during the day. That’s why many overseas super apps include features like ride hailing, food delivery or even social media to keep people engaged on their platforms.

Lee was referring to X.com, the website domain Musk bought back from PayPal in 2017. The billionaire hinted that his planned acquisition of Twitter would actually serve to accelerate the creation of X, an “everything app” earlier this month.

However, Lee’s fellow panelists, Maria Paula Arregui, managing director of Mercado Pago at Mercado Libre, and Ron Shevlin, head of research at Cornerstone Advisors, don’t see Musk’s deal for Twitter as a potential starting point for a super app. .

“I think that trust, privacy, security is a big part that will give social networks a chance to become a super app,” Arregui said, “I don’t see that yet in social media.”

Because of what Arregui expressed, Shevlin said that Twitter is too political a social platform for commerce to be launched on it.

“Also, Elon Musk himself is a very polarizing figure, and any attempt he would make to become a broad trading platform would invite a lot of regulatory action,” Shevlin told the crowd.