In my last post I dove into the rebundling movement and fintech companies’ focus on being the primary account as the holy grail to enable cross sell and therefore profitable unit economics. In this post I'm going to dive deeper into the race among consumer fintechs to create the “super app,” what that means, and whether it’s even possible.
Great take! This is spot on with what I’ve seen in a consumer research project for a financial dashboard product. Most consumers don’t mind the sprawl and care much more about getting the best savings rate, credit card rewards or investing returns than they care about all of those products being in the same place. The only way for fintechs to compete with the amount of choice here is on price or hype, which is not very interesting.
In terms of seeing all your money in one place, this is only a real pain point for mid- to low-income consumers who need finer control to manage paycheck-to-paycheck life. Currently people use spreadsheets or a bunch of different budgeting apps, but there’s no standout in this space. It’s a significant segment who need some kind of better dashboard product, but the revenue model/opportunity seems unclear [at scale] given the cross-selling myth. There’s a hypothesized path here as a marketplace (e.g. Mint, CreditKarma) collecting revenue on fintechs’ CAC, but no one has cracked stealing meaningful share from Google and Facebook.
Your B2B thesis is much more compelling, where the value of the dashboard is more straightforward, essential and universal. I’m curious to see how the potential for enhanced underwriting plays out with B2B, since this seems like another myth in the consumer space.
Great take! This is spot on with what I’ve seen in a consumer research project for a financial dashboard product. Most consumers don’t mind the sprawl and care much more about getting the best savings rate, credit card rewards or investing returns than they care about all of those products being in the same place. The only way for fintechs to compete with the amount of choice here is on price or hype, which is not very interesting.
In terms of seeing all your money in one place, this is only a real pain point for mid- to low-income consumers who need finer control to manage paycheck-to-paycheck life. Currently people use spreadsheets or a bunch of different budgeting apps, but there’s no standout in this space. It’s a significant segment who need some kind of better dashboard product, but the revenue model/opportunity seems unclear [at scale] given the cross-selling myth. There’s a hypothesized path here as a marketplace (e.g. Mint, CreditKarma) collecting revenue on fintechs’ CAC, but no one has cracked stealing meaningful share from Google and Facebook.
Your B2B thesis is much more compelling, where the value of the dashboard is more straightforward, essential and universal. I’m curious to see how the potential for enhanced underwriting plays out with B2B, since this seems like another myth in the consumer space.
Appreciate the thought-provoking post!