Super Apps Versus Mini Apps: What Sets Them Apart in the Digital Ecosystem?

Today, our smartphones are a veritable app ecosystem. We have shopping programs, financial institution software,  and marketplaces. It’s even difficult to navigate through so many options, even if you limit the use of apps.

A few years ago, a visionary concept from China posed the question, “Why not consolidate all these services into one application?” This led to the birth of the 'super app', a concept that has even captivated industry giants like Elon Musk.

Understanding the Super App

Gartner predicts that by 2027, over half the global population will be active super app users. In the U.S., over 60% of people express a desire for an app that offers multiple integrated services.

Super apps are comprehensive, multi-functional platforms that amalgamate various services, allowing users to perform multiple tasks seamlessly without switching between different apps. These integrated digital ecosystems are popular due to their convenience and the extensive time users spend utilizing their diverse features.

Their primary goal is to streamline daily tasks for individuals and businesses, eliminating the need for multiple separate apps. The super app acts as a central hub for various activities, enhancing practicality and efficiency.

What was the first super app?

The first application to adopt this “super program” profile was the Chinese WeChat. It was initially developed as a text and voice app, but it fell in love with people and became part of the routine of millions of users in China.

WeChat became a craze for providing the Chinese, and later to other users around the world, with a centralized experience in a super app. People no longer needed to navigate through multiple programs, saving time.

If the concept seems familiar, it is because in the US we already have examples of super apps, such as Uber, Amazon, PayPal, Square, and Google.

Amazon offers a wide range of services under one platform. In addition to its e-commerce site, Amazon offers streaming video and music services, grocery delivery, and even home security services. And PayPal is primarily known as a payment processing platform, but it has expanded into other areas as well. The company now offers credit products, peer-to-peer payments, and even cryptocurrency trading.

When  Elon Musk bought Twitter, in a process completed in October 2022, he expressed a desire to turn the platform into a super app. And this generated more buzz and expectations regarding this type of format.

How does a super app work?

Apps have made people’s lives a lot easier. After all, today, it is not always necessary to be on a desktop computer or a notebook to access the services of banking institutions, make purchases and resolve pending issues. Everything can now be done via smartphone.

However, it can still be stressful having to navigate through multiple solutions, clogging up your phone’s memory, and having to deal with updating too many apps. In this sense, people would benefit from a centralized application that promotes several functionalities at the same time.

It was to explore this vacuum in the market that super apps emerged, as these programs are capable of performing different functions that, many times, are not related to each other. In this way, they are versatile solutions, as they allow the user to solve a multitude of problems.

An example of this is that the user has at his disposal, in a single program, several different services that are part of his routine, such as payment of bills from banking institutions and online purchases.

In addition, super apps reduce the number of steps when confirming transactions, such as bank transfers, and also promote discounts on purchases — all in the same application.

The idea behind the super app is that users can access multiple resources without having to download more than one application, leaving the interface of their mobile device cleaner and without having to worry about updates and different programs that consume the memory of a smartphone, for example.

What is the difference between a super app and a mini app?

To be a super app, the program has to be useful to the user on different levels. Therefore, if the person has to look for several other services in scattered applications, this solution does not qualify as a super app.

Contrary to what many people may think, the mini app is not represented by traditional apps, but it is also another trend. Also known as micro apps, they serve to complement the big ones, offering all the support necessary for the user to solve their pending issues.

There is no app store or separate marketplace for mini apps. They are discovered and activated by super app users and once used they can also be easily removed from the UI.

In general, mini apps are developed to complete one or more specific tasks of a larger app, such as the functionality to contract services, buy a product, make donations, and rent something, among others.

For a more robust system to exist and be efficient, it needs to be combined with specialized services ready to help you meet specific verticals.

Thus, large companies can team up with mini app developers to occupy a larger share of the market — or produce these solutions internally, which is more expensive.

It is in this logic that micro apps work, as a complementary alternative and a tool with solutions prepared to integrate in a quick and practical way with larger interfaces.

Super apps vs mini apps: competitors or allies?

Although super apps concentrate a multitude of functions, mini apps are exploited to make certain functions faster and also in an open innovation context, in which one company allies with another to gain access to more business verticals.

Therefore, as we saw in the article, the super app is not necessarily a competitor to the mini app. A company that launches a super application can launch a more specific solution to prevent the “super program” from becoming too heavy and slow for users, for example.

The proof that the two solutions are not competitors is that WeChat itself has launched mini apps to complement the super app. Both technologies dominate China, but they have everything to dominate the world market, as shown by Elon Musk’s interest.

Mini apps can be explored by specialized startups that want to explore specific solutions. Now that you understand the difference between these two possibilities, you can explore them in your own business, according to your needs and preferences.

It’s time to re-understand miniapps

It has been more than five or six years since the appearance of miniapps. Has it reached its peak or even passed its heyday? Actually, it is a field that continues to evolve and there is still a lot of room for innovation. It is time to re-examine and make some clarifications on the concept of the miniapp because it is loaded with too many meanings and often means different things in different contexts, which makes it difficult to explain clearly during communication.

for developers, miniapps are a kind of technical carrier first. To apply for releasing on a specific Internet platform, the miniapps need to be developed with specific tools and programming languages, following specific specifications, formats, and requirements.

For enterprises, they often consider to put their miniapps on multiple platforms, each of which has its own fully controlled applets content ecology. So enterprises are just “stationing” their business on these platforms in the form of miniapps.

In addition, miniapps are an emerging Internet technology standard as the Mini-App Working Group of W3C is forming a standardized draft proposal (the implementation of quick apps supported by OW2, the EU open-source organization mentioned above, will follow this standard as well). It is no longer the “patent” of a certain Internet company, and the name, “miniapps”, does not mean the technology of any one company. It is a kind of light application form, a representation way of digital content, or what we call “the applet-based digital content “.

After the standard is formed, the underlying implementation of miniapp technology can still vary from one manufacturer to another. This is like that browser manufacturers, such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, Opera, etc., produce their own products, such as Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, Opera, etc., entirely basing on their respective technologies, but this does not affect the fact that they can all correctly parse, render and present HTML content on various computers and cell phones.

The formation of specifications, fait accompli standards and ultimate industry standards has brought about a re-deconstruction of enterprises’ applications. A new technology category has emerged in the market, which allows enterprises to use miniapps as technology carriers to realize business functions and helps them develop, operate and manage their “miniapp-based” business scenarios, application services and business content in an agile manner. The miniapp-based way first occurred in the digitalization process of enterprises, holding no necessary connection with the Internet platforms. A miniapp of a company is prior for its own App. As for whether to put it on the third-party platform, it depends on joint decisions of business, legal, compliance and other departments.

The new idea: the light application solution with applets as carriers for enterprises

The content of miniapps released on the Internet giants’ own platforms would be reviewed and decided by these platforms. The ecology formed by millions of miniapps content is also in the hands of the platforms. Of course, these miniapps can only run in the apps they provide as well.

But can this technology of strong connectivity, high digitalization and rich ecological content be mastered by ordinary enterprises? The so-called “master” here does not mean that enterprises have the ability to develop miniapps and then release them on an Internet platform to carry out business and become part of others’ ecology, but they can have similar technology to build their own miniapp operation platforms, miniapp stores, developer centers, and master the right of review and management. It also means that enterprises can put applets into their own apps and make others become their own cooperative ecology.

With such technology, internally, any enterprise can let IT turn business content into miniapps, and externally can purchase or introduce miniapp-based application systems provided by developers, and then release them in their own “applet store” for distribution to their own employees and customers.

This kind of tool, which we call the technology base of miniapp-based light applications, lets enterprises develop software functions in the “format”, “specification” and “standard” of miniapps, and realize the lifecycle management, release review as well as the placement and monitoring of spread channels for these functional units.

Who is the competitor of the miniapp-based light application technology for enterprises? The answer is not the Internet platform with an miniapp ecosystem, but the traditional native app development model, web application development model and desktop software development model. This is just as HTML and JavaScript which were first prevalent in the Internet website and then gradually used in enterprise applications. This made the so-called “B/S architecture” (Browser-Server architecture) once popular in China. They competed with the C/S architecture in the PC era and the application development based on Visual Basic/Visual C++, and eventually replaced the latter. miniapp-based light application technology is at the moment of entering the enterprise market from the Internet.

FinClip: the technology base of light applications originating in the financial industry

The earliest product to use miniapps as the technology carrier for light applications of enterprises is FinClip — an area that Finogeeks has been deeply involved in since around 2019.

The purpose of FinClip’s technology solution is to give any enterprise in any industry the ability to independently build an miniapp ecosystem, release and manage miniapp content, and run miniapps in their own apps. Because the FinClip team believes that:

- miniapps are the best carrier to promote digital connectivity

- Connectivity is the key to enterprises’ digital transformation

- The miniapp for assets with digital content is most conducive for agile release in business scenarios, real-time risk control, and cost reduction and efficiency increase

The name FinClip comes from FinTech + Clip. The technology, originated in the field of financial technology, was originally designed for banks, securities companies and other financial institutions to develop digital business scenarios with complex functions, strict compliance requirements and strong data security risk control in a technology form of “light applications”. It also aims to help the business segment to independently manage the release of functional fragments by the “on-and-off” mechanism, and consumers to load the content into the App on demand for use when the latest version is always automatically obtained for each use. Considering the needs of the financial business scenario, the R&D team of FinClip decided to adopt the format of “miniapp” and called it “Clip” after an in-depth study of a series of related technologies.

Because the technical form of the miniapp perfectly matches several meanings contained in this word: Firstly, as a code “snippet”, it is “clipped” on an application “host” to run quickly. Secondly, the code is loaded into a “cartridge” (or “container”) embedded in the host and ready to be shot out. Thirdly, it is suitable for application fragments which can be forwarded and shared with short start-up time and fast running speed like attachments. Therefore, the meaning of FinClip is “agile and light application for FinTech scenarios”.

FinClip enables financial institutions to release business scenarios in an agile and dynamic way, and quickly take down scenarios with any potential compliance and information security risks in real time, without having to re-release the app and go through the review for days or even knockback in the app stores and app markets of mobile OS platforms. After all, the risk treatment of financial business faces a huge time pressure and the accountability pressure from the regulators. Risk control is never too “real-time”.

Today, FinClip is no longer a technology dedicated to financial business scenarios. As it turns out, it can meet the demands of the financial industry with strong supervision, strong regulations of information security and privacy protection, and strong risk control requirements, so it can meet the application demands of various other industries as well. It no longer only supports running light applications in mobile apps, but also supports running them in various desktop and IoT smart devices. So, it has gradually developed into a platform technology tool for digital content release, monitoring and control in multiple terminals and devices.