The Future of Super Apps: Emerging Markets as the New Frontier

By Nnamdi Okike

Tosin Eniolorunda may not be a household name, but he and his team have transformed Moniepoint into the backbone of financial transactions for over 6 million Nigerian businesses, handling more than $300 billion annually — nearly 40% of Nigeria’s digital payments volume. As a Nigerian American, I've witnessed firsthand the challenges of the traditional, costly payment systems, and Moniepoint is revolutionizing that experience.

Moniepoint is part of a wave of super apps like Sea Limited, Grab, Kaspi, Yassir, and Nubank — giants in emerging markets that integrate banking, commerce, ride-hailing, and bill payments into a single trusted platform. Unlike the U.S., where trust in financial institutions is high and 96% of households are already banked, emerging markets offer unique conditions for super apps due to high mobile penetration, weak competition from incumbents, poor financial services, and financial crises that erode trust in traditional institutions.

Countries like Brazil, Kazakhstan, and Southeast Asian nations faced severe financial upheavals that left openings for these apps to thrive by rebuilding trust. For example, Nubank emerged from Brazil’s banking turmoil, and Kaspi capitalized on Kazakhstan’s banking crisis. Even smaller populations, like Kazakhstan’s 20 million, can support massive super apps when customers engage deeply—Kaspi’s users transact about 77 times monthly.

Emerging markets such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Vietnam, and Pakistan exhibit the conditions ripe for new super apps: severe but contained financial crises delegitimizing incumbents, high mobile use, and governments enabling easier onboarding. The growth potential is enormous, as demonstrated by historic investments in Tencent and Nubank.

The next generation of super apps will leverage innovations like stablecoins and AI, driven by visionary founders in cities like Abidjan, Buenos Aires, Karachi, and Lagos. These platforms will play a crucial role in shaping emerging market economies.

Nnamdi Okike is co-founder and managing partner of 645 Ventures, focusing on fintech and enterprise technology investments. He has extensive experience investing in technology companies and sees super apps as a transformative force in emerging economies.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Full disclosure: The author holds shares in Kaspi, Sea Limited, and Nubank, although these are not part of 645 Ventures’ portfolio.