How to build a $4bn fintech brand

I learned the power of branding from my first employer, The Financial Times. My FT business card was more persuasive and influential than any ad I will ever create.

Several years later, building brands became my career.

Here’s how I approached that challenge as Creative Director at Papaya Global.

Challenge

Payments fintech is a crowded, compliance-heavy category where most competitors sound alike.

Papaya Global needed a clear, memorable brand story that could scale globally, resonate with CFOs and HR leaders, and support ambitious growth goals.

Approach

As Creative Director, I partnered with Papaya’s leadership team and Koto to define the company’s positioning, narrative, and tone of voice.

Together, we created the brand platform “How the world gets paid”.

I led the development of:

• The brand platform that defined who Papaya is and why it matters — reframing the company from a payments provider to how the world gets paid.

• Tone of voice guidelines that gave the brand a human, confident personality.

• Creative expressions of the new identity across advertising, product marketing, and internal communications.

Impact

The new positioning became the foundation for Papaya’s global campaigns, including two Super Bowl ads that reached 100m+ viewers.

It helped double brand searches (+108%), grow unprompted awareness by +300%, and contributed to record quarterly revenue.

Internally, it gave Papaya’s teams a unified story and a clear north star for creative decision-making.