Background

NAPAS is a unified card-switching center established by the merging of two switching units, namely Banknetvn and Smartlink. NAPAS is licensed by the State Bank to provide financial switching services and electronic clearing services in Vietnam.

Objective

NAPAS's vision was to be the leading provider of card payment and e-payment services for retail transactions in Vietnam. NAPAS had two distinct target customers, namely B2B and B2C. The question was whether they would be positioned as the only financial switching and automatic clearing house service, or as a Vietnamese Visa for domestic payment. What would they call a NAPAS card in the future? Would a ‘domestic/national payment card’ have any new features or functions in comparison to its current cards?

Action and Result

Our research led us to recommend that NAPAS be positioned as the national card for payment that is the easiest to access for all classes of customer in Vietnam, offers the greatest diversity of payment functions, is issued by a financial switching and clearing organization that serves all banks and large businesses, and is a pioneer of the non-cash payment trend in Vietnam. To align with their values and goals, we identified The Regular Guy as a suitable brand archetype for NAPAS: close, modern, intelligent. Also, we suggested that NAPAS communicate as the national payment card instead of cash for everyone due to its multi-functionality and easy registration policy.