From Cashfree Payments to Move Fast - When agility & speed dictate fintech success

In today’s fast-paced world, businesses are increasingly realizing the importance of coming up with faster solutions to customer problems, especially when it concerns payment processes where a delay or a lag time is not preferred by businesses and consumers alike. Taking this into account, Cashfree Payments, a leading payments and API banking platform in India, has unveiled its brand refresh campaign – ‘Move Fast’ – to highlight the importance it places on agility and speed. The company has onboarded actor Rajkummar Rao as the brand ambassador for the new campaign positioning it as the go-to partner for businesses that are seeking faster payment solutions, faster support, and faster onboarding.

The new digital film launched by the brand depicts actor Rajkummar Rao as a rock concert singer, who is surprised that nobody has turned up to watch his show. The person in charge of the concert then informs him that due to the failure in the payment gateway, nobody could buy tickets for the concert which has led to the absence of any audience. The ad then concludes by narrating how Cashfree Payments enables one to ‘Move fast’, ensuring faster payments, onboarding, and support. In today’s day and age when concerts are quite popular among people, especially Gen Zs, the ad strikes the right chord when it comes to highlighting the importance of faster payments.

The ad campaign reinforces how Cashfree Payments empowers merchants of all sizes and at every growth stage to experience faster onboarding, seamless support, and transactions, helping them to focus on success and growth without worrying about payment failures or delayed payments.

Watch the ad film here:

Cashfree Payments processes transactions that are worth $80+ billion annually. Recently it unveiled industry-first products such as flowWise for payment orchestration, Secure ID, KYC Link, Risk Shield for monitoring fraud, and more. It is also expanding outside of India in the UAE through Telr, its acquired partner.

In conversation with Adgully, Aditi Olemann, Head of Marketing, Cashfree Payments, sheds light on the strategic vision behind the brand refresh of Cashfree Payments, what can the consumers expect from it, how actor Rajkummar Rao amplifies the message of ‘Move Fast’. She also discusses the plans of Cashfree Payments to promote the campaign, the concept behind the campaign, how Cashfree Payments is ensuring business needs are met quickly and efficiently and more.

Could you share the strategic vision behind the brand refresh?

We are excited about what we have in store. We as a company have always truly believed in being customer-centric and understanding what our customers need from us as a payment company and we understand that Indian merchants whether they are online or offline merchants, what is most important for them is that they need to get things done fast, move fast, set up their business fast, be faster than the competition. This is something that we always have known and with this brand refresh, we are committing and doubling down on that positioning. So, we are unveiling our new tagline as part of the refresh, which is basically ‘Move Fast’. And we are committing to faster onboarding, faster payments, and faster support for our merchants.

What can the consumers expect from the brand refresh? Will the logo colour change and will there be a new logo?

We are not planning to change our logo because we do believe that our logo is a testament to who we have been from the start till now. Our new tagline, ‘Move Fast’, will be visible with the logo in many places. What consumers can expect is a lot more relatable changes in the colour formats we use. There will be a change in our website, we will become a lot more SMB friendly. We will double down on our commitment to SMBs. You will be seeing a lot more of Rajkummar Rao as well because he is our brand ambassador. And you will be seeing a lot more of us on social talking about and explaining what ‘Move Fast’ means for us as well as a lot of our merchants and brands who use Cashfree, talking about their journeys what they have built, how they have moved fast and how Cashfree has helped them do that.

How does actor Rajkummar Rao amplify the message of ‘Move Fast’? Could you share more details surrounding his collaboration with Cashfree Payments?

We are super excited to have Rajkummar Rao on board because we believe that he is a great fit for who we are as a brand. We do think that his personality and what he stands for really resonates with who we are. We have always been a very authentic brand, really true to our promise of what our customers and merchants need.  We believe Rajkummar is also such an actor who is true to his craft, understands his audience very well, and performs excellently every single time. He is dependable and those are some of the things that we as a brand have always been. I think that's why Rajkummar is a great face for us as a brand and for this campaign.

The ad itself is very fun and I would leave it up to people to watch the ad and enjoy it. It’s a quirky ad where Rajkummar faces issues with the bad payment gateway. We have an interesting plug with the recent issues that a lot of people face with not being able to buy concert tickets because of the challenges they face. And how by using the Cashfree Payments gateway, Rajkummar can set up his business where faster support, and faster onboarding help. The ad reflects his personality that our brand persona resonates with which is why we are very excited to have him onboard.

How do you plan to promote this campaign across digital and social media platforms and what is the marketing strategy?

I think people often believe that B2B marketing is only talking about specific products. We strongly believe that in B2B marketing, just as in B2C, it's really important to communicate who you are, and what you stand for as a brand and that is the attempt here with this campaign. So, we are going multi-channel, of course we will be going digital, but we will also be on OOH, and we will have some print. We will be seen on social a lot, it's multi-touch completely and beyond just the ad itself, we will also have a lot of our merchants, some of the brands who use us today and who love us, talking about what ‘Move Fast’ means to them, how they have grown their businesses and how Cashfree has been a partner for them.

Could you share more details surrounding the story and concept behind this campaign and which creative agency has conceptualized it?

The creative agency was OML and it was great fun working with them. They are a creative bunch of people with great ideas. The campaign surrounds Rajkummar debuting as a rockstar with a band and he is very excited to get on stage. Then he realizes that nobody has turned up, because people could not buy his tickets. After all, the payment gateway was not good. Then he goes on from there to talk about his journey.

As we know businesses today need to be very fast and move in alignment with the evolving consumer trends, how does Cashfree Payments ensure that business needs are met efficiently and quickly, and what makes it different from its competitors?

With regards to ‘Move Fast’, our first commitment is faster onboarding, businesses want to set up new products or new business lines fast, so how can we help businesses go live very quickly, go to market with new products quickly, that's the first commitment.  The second is how we can help them with faster payments. For instance, as a consumer when you buy something on Amazon, the process of buying is very simple because the address, and preferred payment mode are already saved. It is just a one click, two-click experience for them. But every time you discover a new D2C brand, it’s not always the Amazon experience, often you have to fill in all the details, and add your payment details. It's a multi-step process and many consumers get frustrated in that and then they drop off. Sometimes they also don’t know whether they can trust the brand.

So, there Cashfree comes in and provides the business with a really fast checkout in a matter of seconds. For instance, addresses are pre-filled, an experience where you don't have to fill in the address, it is already filled for you, even if it is a new D2C brand, giving a very seamless, less than 9 second check out experience, from the time you put something on your cart to the time you get that confirmation on your payment. So it is really helping businesses to give that Wow experience to the consumers and as a result grow their topline. Because the customers will not drop off, which means that there will be more revenue and the third thing where we are committing to businesses is to give very reliable and fast support. Because payment is a mission critical thing for businesses, but if your payment is failing, your revenue will go for a toss. Even a simple failure is mission-critical for a business. So that is where they must get the support, they have a partner who they can trust for such issues. These are the three things we are helping merchants with and as a result the end consumer as well for a truly Wow experience.

What is Cashfree Payments offering to its consumers with this brand refresh and what are the new things it is offering and what impact does it aim to make on the consumer’s mind with this new campaign?

For us our customers are businesses, merchants. So as part of ‘Move Fast’ as a positioning, we have a set of products that we have introduced over the last few months, which helped businesses improve the success of payments, so that whenever a consumer is paying, the payment does not fail, for example we have a product called ‘FlowWise’, which helps to do that, give almost near 100% success rate, no payment should fail.

Similarly, we have a product called Checkout, so that when for any D2C brand or any online business when the customer comes on their app or on their instagram or anywhere, they are able to give a one click checkout experience. And we also have now expanded into international payments, which is another thing we truly believe is important for Indian businesses, not just collecting domestic customers, more and more businesses are now collecting international customers, how can they give the same seamless experience for international payments as they give for the Indian customers.

Cashfree Payments has recently got the Payment Aggregator Cross Border License, so how is this fostering International trade and helping in economic growth?

We are the first fintech in the country to receive the Payment Aggregator Cross Border License, I think it is a great step overall for Indian brands to take their products international, for them to really grow their business beyond India. This is a milestone moment that RBI has really enabled for fintech in the country. Also, it is not just about businesses collecting international payments for India, it is also the other way around for import use cases as well. If you think this way, cross-border transactions have always been a bit difficult.

In the Indian context you have UPI which is so seamless, with so many modes. International payments have always been a little more frictionful. But with the PACB license and with the sort of products that we are building as a fintech, we are looking at giving the same seamless experience and therefore helping merchants grow internationally. Today, when you have to expand from one state to another in India, you don’t think twice. It’s so simple, we want to make it as simple for businesses to grow internationally as well.

What have been the ad spends and marketing budget of Cashfree Payments in 2024 and how much has been allocated for 2025?

In 2024, we really started to reinforce our commitment to building our brand, so in addition to allocating a budget for performance marketing, etc., we did allocate a budget to building our brand and that is the same plan for 2025 as well. We aim to double down. I think the refresh and what we are doing around it, is testimony to that. So, 2025 is going to be a lot more on working on truly building our brand, and of course building it authentically.

What will form the core of the creative communication process at Cashfree Payments for 2025?

The core is going to be the commitment, which is ‘Move Fast’. Everything is going to be around speed and when we say speed, it is also about taking new products to the market, how can we be the first one to take innovative products to the market, how can we always bring incremental as well as major improvements in the merchant's life as well as in the consumer's life. So, a lot of our communication and a lot of what we will be doing is going to be about speed.

How is Cashfree Payments ensuring that there are chances of less discrepancy while ensuring the speed of the payment process?

For us, when we say ‘Move Fast’, it does not just mean move fast from a  marketing perspective, it is also how fundamentally we as a company have optimized our processes, for instance, our operations and products team have been constantly working on ensuring that we can give a same day activation experience to our merchants, help them go live fast. We are working on processes with our bank partners in the backend to be able to resolve issues fast. A lot of those things come in for us to proudly say that you are going to move fast and we are going to help you move fast.

What have been the recent developments and initiatives at Cashfree Payments?

‘Move Fast’ is the biggest initiative that we have been working on for a while now. And we are very excited to unveil it. Beyond that, we have started focussing a lot on customer advocacy, where we essentially want our customers to talk about what their experience has been with Cashfree Payments because we do believe that it resonates with who we are as a brand. We are a lot more active on social media because we want the world to know not just about our products, but also about who we are. A lot more talk about what we are as a team with a lot of employee engagement content, so the idea here is for our merchants and consumers to know who truly Cashfree is as a brand.

What are the expansion plans of Cashfree Payments in 2025?

We have exciting plans in India and also internationally. We do believe that we are building a backbone for the Indian economy and we believe that there is a lot more that we can do in India and beyond. So, in terms of our plans for 2025, there are a lot of new products that people will see come out, in the payments space but also beyond. One very exciting thing we are working on is solving for onboarding, fraud detection and fraud monitoring. Because we believe that payments are one leg of what we are solving, there is more than that involved in a merchant's journey. It is really important now to solve fraud, both in the B2C and B2B context, so we are doubling down on that. Thus, people will see a lot more of that happening.

What is the overall brand vision of Cashfree Payments?

We believe that we are building the backbone of the Indian economy, we are helping to build the economy. We of course understand what it means for us and what it means to double down on building that. As a brand, ‘Move Fast’ is not just a campaign, but it is who we are. So, that’s going to be the ethos of the brand, even internally how do we ship things fast, how do we innovate fast, how do we work with regulators, and the government to ensure that we can unlock challenges and obstacles and make payments a fast, smooth, and compliant experience? That’s what our brand will resonate with.

How has Cashfree Payments’ performance been in 2024? What are the growth targets/ focus areas for 2025?

The year 2024 has seen us doubling down on some of the products where we have seen great growth, flowWise is such a product which we have taken to scale today. In the next two years, we are focussing on building our SMB merchant base. We plan to look at a 10x number in the next two to three years, we look at how we can build payment solutions that every SMB can use and that also gets reflected in our performance as well as our growth and the new products that will come out from our side.