Square will finally make its super app play. As Square adds features and acquires businesses at a dizzying pace, Cash App Pay will bring it all together. The newly launched app merges its small business vendor and consumer Cash App ecosystems, allowing US vendors to accept payments made via the Cash App P2P payment platform.

Payments are set to break physical and digital borders in 2022. Innovations will make payments accessible across regions; super apps will address consumers’ financial needs all in one place; and lending will extend credit to once-inaccessible segments.

The closure of an ad-free YouTube app is a reminder of ad blockers’ prominence: Digital advertising efforts are at odds with the experience most internet users want.

Social AR doesn’t require users to download a separate app or purchase a new device, making it more easily accessible. There are many ways for people to consume AR, including via standalone apps, headsets, and in-store experiences. But social media consistently ranks as a top AR destination among consumers, making it a prime venue for branded AR content as well.

The app had just 1.7 million installs globally in August, down from a peak of 9.6 million in February, according to SensorTower/TechCrunch. Early this year, the momentum seemed strong enough for us to publish a full research piece on social audio. We noted the lack of scale as one of the top challenges back then, and there’s not much reason to believe that has changed.

Spurred by changes in mobile advertising, developers will integrate more commerce features into apps in 2022. They’ll add more AR, visual search capabilities, QR codes, and carbon footprint metrics to attract and keep users.

The phone “supplements our new and improved mobile app, which now allows for payment and exclusive offers,” said Lisa Deletroz, senior director of marketing at Wendy’s Canada, in a release announcing the program. To enter, users had to use the Wendy’s app to place an order and post a screenshot to Twitter using the #wendyphone and #contest hashtags.

HBO Max was the most downloaded US mobile entertainment app in 2021, with 46.0 million downloads and a monster growth rate of 101%. Second-place Netflix saw downloads drop by 15% year over year to 38.0 million.

Gen Z’s itch to get back to normal activities in the real world should guide any marketer’s approach to targeting this demographic. It’s tempting to take a cynical view of the metaverse and speculate on Facebook’s ulterior motives for promoting it.

Retailers and brands need to ensure that they are truly omnichannel and present on the broad spectrum of commerce channels available to consumers, including apps and social media platforms. A great mobile app experience will also help connect with this cohort.

TikTok and Instagram were once again the top US social networking apps of 2021, downloaded 94.0 million and 64.0 million times that year, respectively. Snapchat took third place with a 10% jump in downloads, leapfrogging Facebook, whose downloads fell by 11%.

Since Facebook rebranded itself as Meta, mobile apps have been scrambling to stake a claim in the metaverse—on paper at least. In November, the month after the rebrand, 29 apps worldwide added “metaverse” to their name or description, more than double the number in October. This trend hasn’t wavered: In the three months since Meta emerged, 86 more apps have featured the buzzword in their name or description.

It should come as little surprise that Amazon was the top US shopping app in 2021, downloaded 40.0 million times that year. More remarkable is Shein’s leap to the No. 2 spot, up from seventh place in 2020. The Chinese fashion giant had 32.0 million US downloads under its belt in 2021, 68% more than the year prior.