Who’s winning the sprint to become a financial services super app: At Money20/20 USA, Insider Intelligence gave financial services executives an advance look at our upcoming matrix compiling some of the industry’s most comprehensive data about global financial services super apps.

The number of mobile messaging app users worldwide will rise by 6.1% in 2021, and new business features facilitate brand-consumer interactions.

China continues to lead the world in all things ecommerce, including innovation. Social commerce livestreaming is just one of many new stories for 2021 and beyond.

The pandemic was disastrous for many retailers; we estimate that total retail sales worldwide plunged 2.8% in 2020. Though, while many physical stores were shuttered, digital retail sales soared by over 25% in a single year.

Though virtually unknown outside of China, a new crop of local direct-to-consumer brands are making a name for themselves at home—and even outperforming some of the major foreign players.

Social commerce is rising rapidly worldwide. But to what extent can the US market mirror that of China, the world leader in social commerce?

When social buying in China will boom

In April 2016, WeCom launched as WeChat Work in China, to only moderate success. The pandemic has turbocharged its user growth, however. The app’s integration with WeChat and arsenal of business features will make it a valuable asset for marketers even after offices reopen.

“Women hold up half the sky,” former Chinese leader Mao Zedong famously said. More than fifty years on, women in China are doing so online, driving digital trends and fast becoming a cohort that marketers ignore at their peril.

The digital divide has widened, particularly over the past year, and left seniors worldwide in the lurch. This issue takes on added urgency in China, where gender imbalance, delayed marriage, and a declining birthrate only exacerbate the rapid aging of its population. In November, the government urged tech companies to cater to the elderly, and China’s digital giants are now tapping into the so-called silver market.

The rest of the world is waking up to the potential of shoppable livestreams, but it’s old news to China’s short-form video players and ecommerce platforms. Short-video leaders Douyin (TikTok’s sister app) and Kuaishou (known outside of China as Kwai) have been expanding their social commerce operations, not just to sell products, but to provide services and other forms of content as well.

For years, luxury brands around the world have been slow to adopt digital. But the pandemic has sped up the process, forcing many to pivot and innovate during a time when a large number of transactions are happening digitally.

After the COVID-19 shock of H1 2020, everyday life in China has gradually returned to the pre-pandemic norm, and economic activities have been on the rebound.

Social commerce is a fast-growing segment of the US ecommerce market that’s garnering more attention and investment from media companies and brands.

Social commerce accelerated in the US in 2020 amid the pandemic-driven ecommerce boom as key platforms advanced their shopping and checkout capabilities.

Despite the hype, most US consumers won’t make a purchase via social media in 2021. Discovery and consideration, rather than direct transactions within social apps, will remain key opportunities for brands next year.

The pandemic has fueled greater social media usage worldwide and prompted revisions to our earlier forecasts. We now expect the total number of social network users to rise 8.1% in 2020, to 3.23 billion—equivalent to 80.7% of all internet users.

Tencent-owned WeChat will remain China’s leading mobile messaging app with 705.4 million monthly users in 2020, according to our estimates.

Our new forecast for global mobile messaging app users shows that the pandemic has accelerated adoption of OTT messaging services, though not in every country nor to the same degree for every app.

Of the many channels out there, SMS may not be the most exciting, but it is the most personal. And when marketers want to build on those one-on-one connections with consumers, their efforts must be exactly that.