In Singapore, the rise of tech-savvy, e-commerce-driven consumers has driven the adoption of flexible payment solutions, such as Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL). But despite this favourable climate, GrabPayLater faced a key challenge: unlike the instant gratification of booking a ride or ordering food, financial tools are inherently intangible and often misunderstood.
Grab is Southeast Asia’s leading superapp, offering services across transport, food delivery, payments, and more.
Among its suite of financial products is GrabPayLater, a Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) service that empowers users to split payments into interest-free monthly instalments without hidden fees across thousands of offline and online merchants.
Our goal was to reposition GrabPayLater from being an abstract, misunderstood offering to a clear, empowering solution. We wanted to:
While Grab’s core services offer instant, visible value, GrabPayLater was clouded by skepticism typical of the BNPL category, concerns around interest rates, hidden fees, and complexity.
The core challenge: how do we make something intangible feel real, useful, and trustworthy?
We utilized behavioral insights to discover that the target audience responded better when education felt like entertainment. Therefore, gamification was incorporated into the campaign to make learning about BNPL engaging, personalized, and memorable.
We worked with Digital Turbine to develop a unique game experience for GrabPayLater’s users. Players swiped a basket in the ad to catch falling items like gadgets and clothes. Once the game ended, the ‘aha moment’ arrived: the ad would show a breakdown of the total cost, monthly payments, and just how affordable even big-ticket items could be with GrabPayLater.
The campaign ran in Singapore for three months, from 2 April until 30 June 2024, aligning with seasonal online shopping spikes to maximize relevance.
We strategically engaged users on TikTok and Meta, which enabled us to leverage specific platform features while providing the best fit with the target audience.
On TikTok, we leveraged TopView placements, Superlike effects, and KOLs to create engaging, trend-worthy content, while Meta ads targeted users to reinforce GrabPayLater’s affordability benefits. We integrated paid media, influencers, and owned channels to deliver a seamless campaign across awareness, consideration, and action stages
GrabPayLater’s BNPL Gamification campaign broke through the noise with a standout blend of gamification, influencer collaboration, and precise media targeting. The numbers speak for themselves:
By turning complexity into clarity and education into play, we helped GrabPayLater cut through category confusion and build emotional connection and trust, redefining what financial marketing could feel like.
“This campaign turned financial literacy into a fun and engaging experience for our users. By gamifying how GrabPayLater works, we showed how easy and affordable big-ticket purchases can be. It helped us cut through the noise, build trust, and connect with our audience in a new way.”
