Superapps Supervised? Rethinking Regulation in Asia’s Digital Economy

21 July 2025

In much of Asia, digital life is increasingly lived through a single screen: the superapp. Whether it’s hailing a ride, ordering food, paying bills, booking a doctor, or sending money, platforms like Grab, Gojek, Kakao, and WeChat have redefined convenience and access.

But as these platforms grow in reach and influence — bundling services, aggregating user data, and embedding themselves into daily routines — regulators face a new kind of challenge. How do we continue to encourage digital innovation while ensuring fair competition, consumer protection, and responsible use of data?

The answer isn’t simple. Superapps represent both the best and most complex aspects of Asia’s digital transformation: they are engines of inclusion and growth, but also potential chokepoints in an increasingly platform-driven economy.

The Rise of the Superapp

Asia’s version of the Internet has not followed the traditional Western model of individual specialised apps. Instead, in markets with fragmented infrastructure and low digital starting points, superapps emerged as a pragmatic solution — bundling services to offer seamless, mobile-first functionality.

Grab started as a ride-hailing service and now offers financial services, deliveries, e-commerce, and health services. Gojek in Indonesia has followed a similar trajectory. These platforms have helped onboard millions of MSMEs, enabled cashless commerce, and offered employment flexibility to a new generation of gig workers.

Governments, too, have benefited — using these platforms as policy delivery channels, from vaccine distribution to digital payment rollouts.

But this model of consolidation also raises questions that traditional regulatory frameworks weren’t designed to answer.

The New Regulatory Dilemma

Superapps don’t fit neatly into sectoral regulations. Is Grab a transport company? A bank? A health service intermediary? A social platform? In truth, it is all of the above — and more.

This convergence creates regulatory gaps, overlaps, and friction:

• Market Power & Competition: The bundling of services may give rise to dominance in multiple markets. A platform that controls payments, logistics, and visibility may be able to tilt the playing field in its favour — not necessarily through overt abuse, but through “ecosystem advantage.”
• Data Use & Privacy: Superapps collect enormous amounts of cross-sectoral data, from user locations to financial behaviour. Existing data protection laws may not fully address the risks of such data concentration — particularly where AI and profiling are used to nudge or shape consumer behaviour.
• Consumer Protection & Redress: With integrated services, accountability becomes murky. If a consumer orders medicine through a health partner on a ride-hailing app and something goes wrong, who is responsible? The platform, the provider, or both?
• Financial Stability & Inclusion: As superapps expand into digital banking and payments, they may pose systemic risks — especially if they are outside traditional financial oversight frameworks.

Striking the Right Balance

To be clear: the rise of superapps is not a problem to be solved — it’s a feature of Asia’s digital ecosystem. The question is how to build guardrails that support innovation without locking in unfair advantage, stifling competition, or risking public trust.

Several principles can help regulators find that balance:

1. Functional Regulation Over Sectoral Silos
   Regulators should shift from legacy categories (telecom, banking, transport) to a functional approach: regulating the activity (e.g., lending, data sharing, marketplace curation), regardless of who performs it.
2. Platform Accountability and Transparency
   Platforms should be required to explain how services are ranked, how data is shared internally and with third parties, and how user outcomes are influenced. Algorithmic accountability, already on the agenda in the EU and US, should find traction here too.
3. Proportionate Competition Tools
   Rather than punishing size, competition authorities can focus on conduct — such as self-preferencing or exclusivity clauses. Interim codes of conduct or sandbox-style rules can allow experimentation without locking in structural advantages.
4. Interoperability and Portability
   Allowing users and merchants to switch platforms more easily — including through data portability or interoperable payment rails — reduces lock-in and promotes fairer competition.
5. Public-Private Dialogue
   Governments must engage with platforms not just as watchdogs but as co-designers of policy solutions. Issues like gig worker protections, digital identity integration, or SME onboarding require shared innovation.

A Regional Moment for Coordination

Importantly, these issues transcend borders. A ride-hailing or fintech rule in Singapore can affect operations in Vietnam, Indonesia, and beyond. Yet there’s little harmonization of platform regulation across Southeast Asia or Asia more broadly.

The ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA), now under negotiation, offers a chance to promote common principles — on data governance, consumer rights, and digital competition. Regional collaboration can help ensure that superapps grow in ways that support rather than distort inclusive digital economies.

Policymakers should also look to emerging international approaches — from the EU’s Digital Markets Act to the OECD’s AI principles — and adapt them to Asia’s unique platform landscape.

Conclusion

Superapps have redefined digital life in Asia — offering unprecedented convenience, scale, and access. But with great platform power comes greater responsibility — and the need for regulatory models that are agile, transparent, and fair.

This is not a call to break up superapps, nor to burden them with legacy-style regulation. It is a call to update our policy toolkit — to make sure that innovation thrives not in spite of regulation, but alongside it.

The digital economy is too important — and too embedded in our daily lives — to be governed by yesterday’s rules. If we get this right, Asia can lead not just in building the future of tech, but in showing the world how to govern it responsibly.

Image source: BCG Platinion