Can BHIM’s emotional pivot win the trust battle in digital payments?

At a bustling vegetable market, a man pays for his groceries using BHIM. The vendor, in a quiet gesture of reverence, taps the phone to her forehead—a traditional Indian way of honouring money. It’s a subtle but powerful moment that reminds us: while digital payments evolve, the cultural respect for money remains deeply rooted.

This is one of the five slice-of-life vignettes in BHIM’s new campaign, Paison ki kadar (Appreciation for money). Developed by Tilt Brand Solutions and launched alongside the upgraded BHIM 3.0 app, the campaign is not selling a payments platform—it’s selling a cultural continuity.

In an era where digital fraud is rampant, financial literacy is uneven, and app differentiation in the UPI ecosystem is wafer-thin, Paison Ki Kadar makes an ambitious play by using emotional storytelling as a gateway to mass behaviour change. It’s not just about driving installs—it’s about earning trust.

Trust issues: More than just a UX problem

As of March 31, 2025, BHIM clocked 268.29 million downloads on Android and 8.96 million on iOS. Those are impressive topline figures, but scratch the surface and a more complex story unfolds.

Despite the platform's status as the official government-backed UPI app and the zero MDR incentive for small merchants on sub-INR 2,000 transactions, adoption remains hesitant in parts of India—especially among the very users it was built to serve.

“Trust, simplicity, and safety continue to matter most,” Lalitha Nataraj, managing director and CEO of NPCI BHIM Services Limited (NBSL) admits to Campaign. “Perception barriers like fear of taxation or uncertainty around fraud still linger. These concerns are less about infrastructure and more about confidence.”

Lalitha Nataraj, managing director and CEO of NPCI BHIM Services Limited (NBSL).

That insight informed the campaign’s strategic pivot from rational messaging to emotional narrative. Nataraj explains, “We chose to speak their language—through stories about families, daily choices, and familiar situations. We’re not talking about the tech; we’re showing how digital payments can be just as personal and trustworthy as handing over an INR 10 note.”

Despite the government's push for a cashless economy and its endorsement of UPI-based mobile payment apps, many Indians remain hesitant. Privacy fears, concerns around fraud, and a general mistrust of digital systems make the leap from cash to cashless feel more like a risk than a reward.

Hence, this campaign has a simple goal. To bridge the psychological gap between cash and digital, especially for first-time users in semi-urban and rural Bharat.

Engineering emotional resonance without losing the brief

The creative gamble here wasn’t without risk. In a utility-driven category dominated by aggressive GTM tactics and cashback lures, could BHIM afford to sidestep hard-sell messaging?

Hari Krishnan, group chief business officer at Tilt Brand Solutions, thinks so. “This category has seen massive media spends by two to three players over the last seven to eight years. Yet, there’s still a massive untapped market. The challenge was to make BHIM feel like it understands the heartbeat of Bharat,” he tells Campaign.

The answer lay in the campaign’s titular insight: Paison Ki Kadar—the deep-seated cultural reverence Indians have for money, regardless of the medium. “We layered utility with emotional storytelling rooted in how Indians actually think about money. It’s not just a medium of exchange—it reflects values, priorities, even personalities,” adds Adarsh Atal, group chief creative officer, Tilt Brand Solutions.

His point becomes evident in the narrative tone: understated yet emotionally loaded, familiar but forward-looking. The films are deployed in nine languages, supported by creative collaborators from each region to retain local texture without diluting the core message.

“The idea was to ensure that the cultural nuances are captured perfectly,” says Krishnan. “We didn’t just translate; we transcreated.”

Why BHIM 3.0 needed a campaign this big

The campaign also serves a dual purpose: announcing the rollout of BHIM 3.0, the app’s most significant upgrade since its launch. New features include data-light usability, a simplified UI, family sharing, expense tracking, and support for over 15 Indian languages.

The upgrades are data-backed, not just cosmetic. “BHIM 3.0 is a product of both reflection and foresight,” says Nataraj. “It addresses real bottlenecks like language barriers and patchy connectivity, while also anticipating future demands. The goal is to move beyond transactions and become an enabler of financial awareness and collaboration.”

Rahul Handa, NBSL’s chief business officer underscores the importance of emotional reassurance. “In India, trust plays a big role in how people adopt new technology, especially when it comes to money. The Paison Ki Kadar campaign reminds people that while the way we transact has changed, our values haven’t. That’s what makes BHIM truly Bharat Ka Apna Payments App.”

Hari Krishnan, group chief business officer at Tilt Brand Solutions.

In a market where every major fintech app uses UPI rails, and user experience is often indistinguishable, BHIM’s biggest branding hurdle isn’t just competition—it’s invisibility.

“While the UPI protocol remains the foundation, each app is an opportunity to serve users in a unique way,” Nataraj explains. “With BHIM 3.0, we’re making sure the experience remains simple, inclusive, and rooted in everyday utility—especially for users who value trust and transparency.”

Still, the distinction between ‘UPI’ and ‘BHIM’ isn’t always clear to end users. BHIM may have been the pioneer, but brand recall has been eclipsed by private players with deeper pockets and more aggressive marketing. The current campaign attempts to course-correct by anchoring the app’s identity in cultural ownership—BHIM as India’s own app, not just another tech product.

This narrative may be soft-sell, but its ambitions are structural.

Behaviour change: The long game

So how does one measure success in a campaign that’s not asking users to click, but to change? According to Krishnan, it's about shifting perceptions before pushing adoption.

“There’s still a large consumer base yet to embrace digital transactions. By positioning BHIM as a brand that understands the cultural significance of money, we aim to make it feel more endearing—and therefore more trustworthy,” he says.

This trust-first approach may well be what the category needs. The Reserve Bank of India’s latest figures show that while digital transactions have exploded in volume—from 222 crore in 2013 to 20,787 crore in 2024—merchant-level adoption, especially among small vendors, remains inconsistent.

Even with zero MDR and a 0.15% incentive on low-value transactions, perception hurdles remain. Some merchants fear tax scrutiny; others question the reliability of digital rails. As Nataraj puts it, “Systemic change only sustains when communication and product innovation move together—guided by ground-level insights and a shared commitment to inclusion.”

In that sense, Paison Ki Kadar is not just an ad campaign—it’s a behavioural intervention.

Perhaps the campaign’s most strategic decision was its multilingual rollout. With nine language versions of the films and region-specific casting, Tilt and NBSL recognised that trust isn’t built in English—it’s built in context.

“Working with local creative talent helped us ensure the stories felt real, not dubbed,” says Krishnan. “It’s one thing to localise copy. It’s another to capture the emotional nuances of a specific geography.”

This regionalised strategy is particularly critical for BHIM’s ambitions in rural and tier 2/3 markets, where digital literacy may be low but emotional literacy is high. The campaign doesn’t assume understanding; it invites it.

Can empathy drive adoption?

UPI transaction value has risen tenfold in five years, touching INR 213.8 lakh crore in FY2024-25, with P2M alone accounting for INR 59.3 lakh crore. Clearly, the behaviour shift is already underway. The question is: who gets the credit?

For now, private apps dominate the narrative. BHIM’s Paison Ki Kadar campaign is a bid to reclaim not just attention, but cultural legitimacy.

Will emotional storytelling be enough? Not on its own. But when paired with a genuinely improved product, a sharp understanding of ground-level hesitations, and a regionalised, empathy-led communication strategy—it may just tilt the balance.

As Atal says, “How we deal with money is a reflection of how we live our lives. We wanted to elevate the conversation beyond transactions—and hopefully, make digital trust a lived experience.”