Super apps as digital transaction platforms: What Southeast Asia’s Grab tells us

A compelling facet of the emergence of digital platforms is the phenomenon of “super apps”. This paper looks at the case of Grab, billed as the Southeast Asian super app. Highly significant in its own right, Grab is an exemplary instance of the rise of digital transaction platforms in digital economy and everyday life. In this paper, we look at the evolution of Grab from an app through a platform to its creation as a super app. We argue that Grab seeks to combine various transaction functions within its super app multiverse, ranging from payment services to credit services under-written by escrow funds to public-private partnerships that channel revenue collections and social spending. By such means, Grab has become an essential infrastructure of everyday life for millions across the region and has achieved international prominence, but its profitability and purpose remain fragile. It shows that such digital transaction platforms, in their super app phase, leave open a wide field of possibilities to imagine what these infrastructures might and should look like in the future.