Cashfree Uses Soan Papdi to Challenge Default Payment Gateways

Cashfree has taken a festive detour from standard B2B advertising. Its new campaign, ‘Mithai Joint Family’, features comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath and uses the familiar soan papdi joke to challenge how merchants choose payment gateways.

The familiar box nobody really wanted

In the film, Rath holds up a box of soan papdi and points out how it is received during Diwali but rarely eaten. The insight is not new to Indian households: it is the default gift that keeps getting passed along. Cashfree extends that observation to payment gateways, where merchants often accept similar core features without asking what else might be available.

He then introduces an assorted mithai box – the ‘mithai joint family’ – where soan papdi sits alongside other sweets. The comparison becomes the campaign’s argument: a familiar default is not the same as a better choice.

From cultural joke to category positioning

Cashfree is using the festive insight to position its payment gateway as offering more than payment success rates. The campaign highlights a dedicated account manager, next-day settlements, and the ability to go live in minutes.

That matters for brand managers because the campaign is doing what many B2B campaigns avoid: it leads with a shared cultural truth instead of a feature list. The soan papdi joke is status-quo bias made visible. When a decision feels routine, buyers stop comparing options and assume the familiar choice is the safe choice.

• Default choices feel safe but can trap buyers in ‘good enough’ options.
• Humour works in B2B when it points out an unspoken truth.
• A new brand identity should match an expanded product story.

Aditi Olemann, vice president of marketing and communications at Cashfree, said the campaign taps into two contrasting emotions: reluctantly accepting soan papdi versus receiving something genuinely better. “We wanted to break that assumption in a way that did not feel like a boring B2B ad,” she said.

What marketers can borrow

The campaign also marks Cashfree’s first major communication under its new brand identity, including a new visual system and redesigned logo. The company says the refresh reflects its expansion from a payments gateway into an AI-native payments platform.

The offer underneath the story is concrete: new merchants can join under the Zero Payment Gateway Fees initiative and pay no gateway fees on their first Rs 20 lakh in sales.

For marketers, the takeaway is to anchor a category comparison in a behaviour people already recognise. Instead of saying ‘we are different’, Cashfree shows the emotional let-down of a default choice – and then places itself as the richer alternative.

Source: Afaqs!