Living the Super App Life: My WeChat Experience in China

Moving to China came with all sorts of surprises—breathtaking skylines, bustling streets, and, oh, the digital marvel that is WeChat. Imagine opening an app for the first time and realizing it’s not just for texting your friends or social media; it’s also your wallet, your dinner menu, your taxi stand, and your shopping mall. In 2023, WeChat ranked 6th among social media platforms with the highest number of users, boasting a staggering 1.3 billion monthly active users (MAU)—while Facebook tops the list with 3 billion.

Being from India and having lived in Switzerland for almost three years, I thought I’d seen the full spectrum of tech solutions. But the sheer scale and versatility of China’s super app ecosystem had me awestruck (and a little overwhelmed). As I’ve discovered, these apps aren’t just tools—they’re ecosystems, reshaping the way millions live, work, and play. In China, your WeChat account forms almost the entirety of your social and digital live.

In this week's article, I document my experience with super apps in China, focusing primarily on WeChat.

My User Experience: Mixed Blessings

Using super apps like WeChat has been a wild ride—equal parts awe-inspiring and hair-pulling. Let me start with the good stuff because, honestly, some of it feels like living in the future:

• Convenience at Its Peak: One login, and it’s your entire digital life, neatly tied together. In China, the average time spent on WeChat at 1 hour and 20 minutes per day.
• The Mini Program Magic: Only launched in 2017, WeChat mini programs are cloud-based apps that operate within the WeChat app, allowing users to access them without downloading a separate app. As of October 2023, there are 4.1 million registered Mini Programs and I use a lot of them almost daily—sometimes to order my dinner, other times to travel by metro.
• Payments That Just Work: Whether I’m buying vegetables at the local market or splitting the dinner bill with friends, WeChat Pay has made my wallet obsolete. I’ve genuinely not seen a yuan note since I got here. It blows my mind that even beggars in touristy areas accept tips via QR codes. Talk about a cashless society!
• Everyone’s On Board: What’s been even more fascinating is how digital payments have crossed generational and geographical boundaries. Elderly grandparents? Small-town vendors? Everyone here is onboard. I’ve spent hours trying to explain social media or online payments to my parents back home, but here in China, everyone is a pro.

But it’s not all sunshine and seamless transactions. Here’s the flip side of the coin:

• The Mini Program Mess: As magical as they are, Mini Programs can feel like digging through an overpacked suitcase. Some are poorly designed, with confusing navigation or laggy performance. And not all businesses make good use of WeChat’s built-in capabilities, like autofill or one-click logins, which just adds friction. Another downside? You can’t switch between multiple Mini Programs at once, which limits me to using only one feature at a time. This makes it inconvenient when you want to compare prices or quickly jump between different tasks—everything feels more siloed than it needs to be.
• The Overcrowded Interface: WeChat’s home screen is... a lot. There’s so much going on that even simple things, like finding my payment history, feel like a scavenger hunt. Everything is there—but it’s buried under layers of menus.
• Unimpressive Recommendations: For an app that collects so much data, I expected it to feel smarter. Instead, most of the recommendations are stuck within individual Mini Programs, with little cross-functionality between them. It’s like they’re all in their own silos.
• Searching Is a Pain: Finding specific Mini Programs or old messages is harder than it should be. If I can’t remember the exact name or keywords, it’s like searching for a needle in a digital haystack.
• Slow Loading Issues: Some Mini Programs take forever to load, especially during peak times. I’ve had moments where I stood awkwardly at a checkout counter, waiting for a QR code to load, all because the app was glitchy.
• Language Barrier: English is not the primary language of these apps—Chinese is. And that’s a massive barrier to entry for anyone who doesn’t speak the language. But here in China, using WeChat isn’t optional, so it can feel like being thrown into the deep end without a life vest.
• Blurred Boundaries: This one hits hard. WeChat isn’t just your wallet or work tool; it’s also your social media. And in China, WeChat doubles as the primary mode of work communication. That means when you share bits of your private life on its social feed, your colleagues, bosses, and professional contacts see it too. Privacy? Let’s just say it’s complicated.

Using super apps like WeChat has been a mix of fascination and frustration for me. On one hand, the convenience and integration are incredible, but on the other, the cluttered design, language barriers, and privacy concerns make it far from perfect. Still, I can’t imagine living in China with the same ease without them. These apps have completely changed how I think about technology and its role in everyday life. In next week’s article, I’ll dive into why super apps thrived in China, their global ambitions and challenges, and whether this phenomenon makes sense in other markets.

Tell me if you have you ever used a super app? I’d love to hear what you think about them!