Bayad Center is facing an identity conundrum. It is the top-of-mind brand for convenient payment for various bills through its highly recognizable centers. However, it has also steadily yet discreetly diversified, making itself the largest fintech and payment backbone for a lot of high profile financial brands in the Philippines. On top of these, it also expanded its portfolio of products, operating across physical and digital platforms. 

Prompted by the rapid, significant shifts in the payments sector, the Bayad Center brand risks being perceived as out of step with the fast-paced, ultramodern and progressive nature of the fintech world. 

Bayad Center has to rethink its identity vis-a-vis the leadership role it navigates while preserving its decades-long, valuable, and high degree of recognition and brand equity. It is also aware of the pressing need to change its identity and reposition itself as the significant financial force that it is.

Moreover, Bayad Center recognizes how the brand can expand more beyond its physical payment associations—its trajectory inevitably goes towards becoming a fintech giant. With its wide array of partnerships across multiple billers, companies, and other brands needing seamless transactions, it now goes beyond just a place to settle Meralco (its parent company) bills. These factored in the necessity for the creation of a mature yet modern identity to address the brand, reputational, and perception issues.

To properly communicate the significant transition and to retain their identity as a reliable and trustworthy payment brand, the Bayad Center team reached out to Design For Tomorrow to help navigate this crucial inflection point, to execute the transition process strategically, and manage expectations with an optimistic spirit.

DFT conducted a series of discovery sessions, talking to people across layers of the organization. Workshops were also executed to underpin the core equity elements, and chart the position it needs to evolve into. Then DFT devised a strategy and the all-important brand architecture to provide clarity and a disciplined approach to creating brand expansions and extensions, amplifying and creating opportunities that are limitless for what once was enclosed in four walls.

Another essential shift is the Bayad Center name change. It limits the brand impression as that of a mere physical, brick-and-mortar kind. The old logo aptly depicts this aspect of their brand, thus seeing the necessity to recalibrate the narrative and identity elements. 

DFT recommended attenuating the brand name to simply “Bayad” thus, from being a limiting “Center” to becoming an omnichannel payment brand that’s more standalone and universal.

In Filipino vernacular, Bayad, both a noun and a verb, means “payment” and “to pay,” respectively. Seeing that there are many ways to pay, and many things to pay for, emphasizing the subject and action of the word rather than its predicate (center), opening possibilities for more than being a center: Bayad can now be your partner in payments anytime and anywhere. This decisive naming metamorphosis also provided the brand the opportunity to own the word ‘pay or payment” in the mind of the public.

The new Bayad identity retains familiar elements to ensure a smooth transition and maintain a high degree of recognition; a similar but more contemporary tint of the original color palette of orange and blue is adopted. DFT also crafted a bespoke and ownable wordmark, putting at the forefront a depiction of the “Power On” button that also nods to its parent company, Meralco, while graphically communicating that it powers up the other fintech brands by providing them the infrastructure backbone and backend technology.

To communicate this brand evolution and create a consistent identity, we developed a brand strategy and brand book to guide the Bayad team to apply the identity in campaigns, point of purchase, promotional items, merchandising materials, physical booths and product demonstration kiosks, and other environment-related applications. 

Then we collaborated with Curiosity Design Research led by Birdie Salva and Kristine Layaoen to test both the suitability, recognition, and acceptance of the new name and identity. Results came overwhelmingly positive, and the evolved brand was greenlighted for the relaunch, with a “You Can Bayad All” advertising campaign conceptualized and produced by Ace Saatchi & Saatchi. 

Today’s currency flows in both physical and digital motions. The virtual realm moves more rapidly than the physical. For Bayad, the decision to evolve has been vital in its ever-increasing growth and customer reach, enabling them to preserve its existing audiences, gain more digital-savvy ones, and introduce a more vibrant identity. 

Adopting Design For Tomorrow’s brand transformation strategy and design, Bayad accomplished shedding off the unwanted image of a mere payment center and repositioning itself as a modern, omnichannel, and full-pledged fintech brand.