As a founder of a mobile ad startup that was acquired by private equity firm Blackstone in 2019, I have been watching the developments in the integration of messaging, payments and social updates as well as other functions into one master app.
The current global leader in this “one master app rules all” space is China’s WeChat. WeChat (Weixin for users in China) allows users to text, play games, share photos/videos, videoconference, pay by mobile, etc. It has over 1.3 billion monthly active users, which is good news for parent company Tencent.
U.S. consumers might use Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp for messaging; Facebook, Instagram or X for posting social media updates; and Venmo, PayPal or other fintech apps for making payments. These are all separate apps doing different things.
Now imagine if you had one app that did it all.
What’s holding back the creation of other all-in-one apps?
Developing an “all-in-one” app is more of a regulatory challenge than a technical one. But many tech giants currently aspire to implement this one master app strategy since it could simplify life for many millions of users.
Take Facebook. A few years ago, it had an effort called Diem to create an internal cryptocurrency on Facebook. However, it took so much flak from regulators and central banks in many countries that it had to abandon its crypto plans and disband its team. Facebook allows you to message and post social media updates, and it now has features such as Meta Pay and payment abilities on Messenger. However, these payment systems still use your credit or debit card or PayPal and are not really native to the app itself.
Elon Musk has stated many times that his intention in acquiring Twitter and renaming it X is to create something like WeChat, an “everything app” to serve a variety of functions, including payments. Like Facebook, you currently can post social media updates and send messages, but not make payments. X has acquired several money transmitter licenses in various states to move this forward. Musk was instrumental at PayPal, one of the current payment giants, so he has a background in payments. However again, the question is: Will regulators throw a roadblock toward this plan?
PayPal and Venmo are payment apps, but you cannot send messages or post social media updates, at least in the way that you can publicly with the popular social media and messaging apps.
Another messaging giant that wants to build an everything app is Telegram. It currently has around 900 million users around the world and recently started allowing users to send USDT stablecoin payments to other users. Telegram had introduced a wallet and a crypto token called TON. The SEC halted Telegram’s development of it, but now, The Open Network (TON) is run and owned by a different set of people, and they have agreed to work closely with Telegram.
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Big hurdles, but also big potential
Whoever manages to pull off this one master app in the U.S. could see a bright future ahead. Think of all the transaction fees, data mining and other benefits this could bring to the companies that do this. However, it is probably safe to say that regulators will scrutinize these plans and make them harder to implement.
Personally, I think this one-master-app-that-does-all concept could be very appealing to a lot of people. Many people keep their social media open all the time, but when they want to send payments, they need to open other apps. From a convenience standpoint, people will want to save time and make payments as easily as sending a link or creating a post.
Master apps also hold potential for investors. Just think of the speed of adoption and the market cap growth of a company that manages to create such an app.
They face big hurdles, but single master apps are an idea whose time has come.
