The news: Bolt fired at least one-third of its staff, per Fintech Business Weekly.

After Bolt’s most recent fundraising round in January 2022, the firm was valued at $11 billion. But by 2024, its valuation had cratered to just $300 million, per The Information.

How we got here: Once a darling of investors, Bolt has struggled to make good on its super app attempt. 

While the app claims to have 80+ million US shoppers subscribed to its app, a perusal of Android and Apple app stores seems to signal otherwise; Google Play only shows 5,000 downloads and a raft of one-star reviews. One user review says: “support never gets back to you and constant errors trying to track packages, absolutely horrible app, looking more like a fraud app now, taking my money and dipping.”

Why this matters: While US financial services companies want to replicate the super app success of AliPay and WeChat stateside, US consumers are not feeling the enthusiasm for an all-in-one financial services app, likely because they have loyalty to other platforms for specific payment and banking services, and Bolt’s current incentives weren’t enticing enough. 

Distinguishing its super app specifically on supercharged crypto capabilities was probably also a misstep for scaling users: We forecast that only 2.5% of the US population are cryptocurrency payment users.