The Rise of the Super App and the Role of Location

The Super App is a new form of a mobile app that combines payments, financial transactions, e-commerce, communications, and other services to create an all-encompassing platform of services. 

The concept of Super Apps began with WeChat, the go-to app for more than 1 billion users in China, that offers a wide range of services including messaging, payments, and e-commerce. In Southeast Asia, Grab and Gojek are the best-known super apps.

Last week, Rappi, the leading Super App in Latin America, announced it has selected Incognia’s location identity technology for global fraud detection to increase the in-app security strategy for LATAM. 

Food delivery, one of Rappi’s many verticals, is a global market that is increasing in size, especially in LATAM. User-friendly apps and tech-enabled driver networks such as Rappi are fueling ready-to-eat food delivery as a major industry category. In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the LATAM food delivery market saw a 66% increase and is expected to grow over 20% in 2022. In Brazil alone, the expenditure on food delivery reached over $8 billion in 2021, according to IFB.  Rappi, founded in 2015, is now present in 9 countries, and has more than 220,000 couriers registered on their network, and over 30 million customers. 

Along with the skyrocketing use of on-demand delivery services, fraudsters are also exploiting this surge in demand to create new courier accounts with stolen identities, and using, renting, and selling the accounts to others, in addition to putting together collusion fraud techniques.

“At Rappi, ensuring security and privacy for both couriers and consumers is our priority. Incognia is the ideal fraud detection partner for our location-based services, because of our shared commitment to user privacy and their unique location-based technology and global fraud data.”

says Felipe Cerqueira - Global Head Operations.

This is why we are super excited to be working with Rappi. With apps that include popular location-based services such as food delivery and transportation, users opting in for location now have the opportunity for an added security bonus from Incognia.

“The delivery space is challenged with unique types of fraud that we are uniquely able to detect using our location-based technology. Working with Rappi in Latin America we are achieving reduction in fraud on their courier app. We look forward to helping Rappi secure its customers while improving the user experience.”

says Incognia’s CEO and cofounder André Ferraz.

“Opting in for location can not only assure meals will arrive on time but also offer an additional layer of security, protecting user accounts, and avoiding schemes like account takeover.”

The success of Super Apps hinges on the ability to deliver a superior and seamless user experience that brings users back as return customers, for an expanding suite of services. Eliminating friction and fraud is essential to this great user experience and eliminating high-friction authentication methods should be high on the list of priorities for any would-be super app. Passwords, one-time passcodes, security keys, facial recognition, and fingerprints should be the exception, not the rule. The beauty of using location behavior for fraud detection is that it works silently in the background, protecting users without them having to take any specific action, other than to be themselves. The added benefit for Super Apps is that location can be used for security and fraud detection across all the supported services, not just the location-based services.

Another important consideration is privacy. With the large amounts of personal data needed to facilitate the delivery of a wide range of services in Super Apps, ensuring user privacy is essential. Traditional authentication and fraud detection solutions rely heavily on personally identifiable information (PII) and static credentials, which when stolen are then compromised. Today over 24 billion stolen credentials are circulating on the Dark Web with usernames and passwords readily available for sale. In contrast, Incognia takes a privacy-first approach that does not collect or associate any additional PII with the location data that we collect. We focus on hashing and encryption to protect the location data we collect, and employ other techniques include probabilistic set structure, differential privacy, and k-anonymity, to bring the data closer to full anonymization.

It was not that long ago that there was a debate on whether native mobile apps would be superseded by the mobile web. Today, the rise of the Super App shows just how far momentum is shifting in favor of apps and the opportunity they provide to offer a tailored user experience, that can enhance brand loyalty and even supersize user engagement. 

Read the full Rappi news release here >>