A decade later from the fintech super-app buzzword associated with anything and everything finance-related, the reality is that most consumers have two, three, or four different apps to help them budget and spend. From wallets that cannot cross international borders to robo-advisors who do not budget or allow for budgeting capabilities, fintech superapps are a reached, unattainable myth.

The Fintech Super-App Fantasy vs. The Reality of What’s Used Every Day

One app for payment, budgeting, lending, investing, and loyalty services is a nice thought. Yet DECTA reports that the average consumer has 2.4 finance apps on their phone, and only 4.6% of finance app users remain for 30 days after download. In addition, 60% of users say they have a second finance app because their first one doesn’t have the required features. Clearly, digital finance does NOT have everything people need all in one place.

In addition, even when promises of no friction arise, when people want to spend on a day-to-day basis, need budgeting insights, and seek consistent functionality, they still find themselves with multiple apps doing different things for different reasons. This fragmentation suggests that products do not live up to their potential across the board.

Reliability & Risk: The “Insurance Apps” That Work in Parallel

It’s one thing for features not to work, but reliability failures cross the line. One of the top five EU-UK digital banks has 54% of app reviews negative, with 39% claiming poor support or account freezes. So, to that end, for all those who adopt challenger banks as their primary form of banking, they oftentimes keep their traditional bank app as an “insurance app” for a rainy day.

Ineffective customer support, long chargebacks and disputing, and delayed verification all put a damper on using financial apps. Therefore, people default to using multiple apps—not necessarily because they want to—but instead having one app as a failsafe isn’t always enough.

Cognitive Overload, Decision Fatigue, and Wallet Fatigue

It’s not just headaches—it’s overwhelming. For those who have two finance apps, 48% confused frequently about where learned information is stored, and that number jumps to 80% for those with 3+ apps.

We make about 35,000 decisions a day. When simple finance action adds the burden of determining which account I’m using to get the right answer, that’s one more fracture in a decision already being made. Ultimately, it leads to decision fatigue and subsequent disengagement and churn.

In fact, finance apps only experience a 4.6% retention rate after 30 days. For every app someone integrates into their device, they’re 17% more likely to delete one within 90 days— fragmentation wins out over time.

Architecture & Ecosystem Barriers to Integration

Many challengers function on sponsor bank connections with legacy structures. To centralize cards, FX, lending, and investment streams into one UX takes multi-core orchestration, real-time API integration, and dynamic consent systems—many still under development.

Where APIs exist, integration can be tenuous. PSD2 created the scaffolding for open banking, but real-time aggregation is often unstable, consent flows tend to be overly complicated for the consumer, and the upcoming EU Digital Identity Wallet may complicate matters even more by increasing friction around sharing and trust.

Regulatory Shifts: PSD3 and the Movement Toward Open-Finance

The PSD3 in Europe, the Open-Finance expansion in the UK, and other regulatory initiatives seek to elevate data portability and service integration in the future; it won’t be unusual for regulations to require deeper API penetration across pensions, insurance, and investment sectors for super-apps to deliver more seamless experiences without the need for screen-scraping or middleware third-party applications.

If these regulations come to fruition, it will change the game, giving fintech the ability to permanently bring together fragmented financial undertakings.

Southeast Asia had a strong potential launchpad for super-apps; Grab and Gojek for ride-hailing, payments, and credit—but even these frontrunners use third-party banks to maintain deposits and savings—which means achieving everything on one app isn’t that easy to do.

In Brazil, Nubank is one of the more comprehensive fintech apps in the world with checking/investing/credit/crypto, but 41% of Brazilians still have to use other apps to budget, meaning there’s still a need for understanding and more personal finance options.

In Estonia, the same goes for digital banks like LHV and Swedbank—great engagement, despite Revolut’s success—but that’s because they facilitate primary transactions like payroll deposits and mortgages, which challenger apps have yet to consolidate.

Design, Data, and Loyalty: Cultivating the Experience

While fintech apps keep their population retained, it doesn’t just come down to features, but where those features are located keeps people retained. For example, personalization is a growing differentiator. When fintech brands offer predictive analytics from surplus dollars spent or proactive budgeting advice, it creates lower churn and higher engagement.

Similarly, loyalty programs work. When rewards exist in the wallet, conversion can increase 58% at checkout. Likewise, those who have rewards points and review payments offered during onboarding have a 91% retention rate at day 90, compared to the standard. When people know the allowances and fees associated with savings/checking or holds on funds, it benefits trust and perceived stability.

The Super-App Dream is Alive

The dream of the super-app is very much alive, but the implementation is far more complicated than following through. Users are still facing fragmented outputs, tenuous infrastructures, and overwhelming cognitive load.

But as regulatory bodies push open finance, orchestration technologies evolve, and a greater focus on simplified design and trust emerges, the unified financial experience isn’t as far away as it used to be. Fintechs that focus on reliability, well-designed, empirically based developments, and the idea of unification have the best opportunity to fill the holes.

When that day arrives, users may be able to delete those complementary apps, and depend on one to do it all.