PayPal highlights the safety and security features its platform offers

In its first campaign for India, digital payment service provider PayPal highlights the safety and security features its platform offers

PayPal, an old hand in the digital payment segment, has rolled out its first campaign for the India market. The ‘Safe hai’ film celebrates India’s biggest social occasion — a wedding — with a videshi twist. The master brand film tracks a young Indian bride and her family’s journey to shop for that perfect “Texan hat” that they plan to gift the American groom’s father. After trying out a number of options, the family buys a hat online overcoming fears associated with paying for a high value purchase digitally. As the two families exchange gifts, the bride and her parents discover the convenience PayPal offers and the safety it provides for digital transactions. 

A series of other films, that are part of the campaign, show different family members exchanging gifts with gusto. In the process, the brand highlights some of the other key product features such as hassle-free returns and one-touch shopping.

The aim of the campaign is to “drive home PayPal’s unflinching commitment to provide a safe and risk-free payment platform to consumers”. 

Jayant Desai, marketing head at PayPal, says, “The rallying cry of ‘safe hai’ hopes to establish PayPal as the trusted partner for both buyers and customers. We are here for the long-term — and are not a fly-by operator. We have built our brand on safety as its top value proposition. We are reaching out to customers and asking them to sign up for PayPal as it is the safest and the easiest mode of payment.” 
 

Desai says PayPal’s communication is aimed at the ‘global Indian’. This target group is not necessarily identified on the basis of SEC  demographic segregation. Rather, the market is segmented on the basis of the consumer’s attitude and interests. Technology lovers with a penchant for international travel are among PayPal’s most loyal consumers. He adds that India is one of the most important markets for the company as a third of India’s consumer-to-business transactions happen through PayPal. 

Sumanto Chattopadhyay, the agency lead on the campaign, says, “Globally, the pillar of PayPal’s success, and therefore its communication platform, is security. Its back-end is so strong that users can transact worry-free. That is what the brand wishes to convey through this campaign.”

Chattopadhyay emphasises that the easiest way to launch a brand in India is to tie up with a celebrity brand ambassador. However, PayPal stresses on authenticity in all its communication, so that approach would not have been right for the brand. The team focused on building recognisable characters, such as the anxious father of the bride that every Indian consumer would relate to. 

PayPal is working at wooing more and more merchants to its platform. Currently, it counts brands such as Yatra, MakeMyTrip and BookMyShow among its clients. It claims to have an active consumer base of 237 million across 200 markets accounting for a payment volume of $400 billion.