The Challenge:
Find a consumer facing way to talk about NFC (Near Field Communication) payments—aka contactless payments—that drives adoption by issuers (aka banks) and usage by consumers. In other words, How do we get banks to issue contactless cards and people to use them?
The TL;DR:
Simply tell people to Tap to pay with Visa
The Long Version:
Contactless payments had failed to launch in the US. While popular around the world, Visa Paywave suffered from poor adoption and limited availability stateside. At the end of 2016, they turned to their newly formed in-house team to help them solve this problem.
Fellow copywriter Adam Wenger and I took on the task, distilling complex technological and financial jargon into simple language that everyone could understand.
After extensive research, trademark checks, iterations, and back-and-forth with legal, we ultimately netted out with: Tap to pay with Visa. Literally, one of our first picks. Which is a great lesson in never throwing away your darlings.
The game plan:
Make “tap to pay” ubiquitous and fair-use so that it can increase adoption throughout the payments industry. From awareness campaigns to reference guides, we created an ecosystem that was ready to take off even before the pandemic hit.
During the start of the pandemic, contactless payments and “tap to pay” messaging became ubiquitous. Early investments paid off as issuers throughout the world began offering contactless cards and retailers reassured customers about “touch-free” payments at checkout.
Now, it's hard to find a place that doesn't let you Tap to pay with Visa.