The Campaign

In the chaos of demonetisation, ‘#KindnessIsCashless’ was a movement to help teach millions of Indians make cashless debit-card transactions. And specifically in Dharavi, the idea was brought to life with the use of the ATM security guard – a unique medium to teach people standing outside in long queues waiting for cash how to do cashless transactions with their debit cards and get out of these lines.

Creative Execution

Here we tied up with security agencies and trained security guards through Indian rhymes and Bollywood songs, who in turn taught Dharavi how to make card payments. ATMs were turned into schools and ATM security guards became the heroes of Dharavi’s transformation helping people get out of the long ATM queues.

Results

Queues outside ATMs in Dharavi got shorter as… • Debit card transactions grew 100% • 50% more card machines were activated • POS transactions went by 32%

On 8th November 2016, the Indian Government abolished 86% of cash in a move to stop widespread corruption. In the chaos that followed, Visa’s ‘#KindnessIsCashless’ was a movement to help teach millions of Indians make cashless debit-card transactions. One of the most affected areas was Dharavi - Asia’s largest slum. Here everything came to a standstill. Dharavi needed a unique and effective solution that reached each of its inhabitants. Here to communicate in a one-to-one manner we chose the ATM security-guard to reach out to the population of Dharavi to teach them how to go cashless with Visa.

Dharavi is Asia’s largest slum with 15,000 small businesses and a turnover of USD 1billion. With the Indian Government banning ?500 and ?1000 bank notes, it came to a standstill. We needed to find a unique and effective way of reaching out to each of the inhabitants to teach them how to go cashless. But with its population caught outside ATMs we needed a way to reach them right there and then. So we chose - the ATM security guard outside ATMs in and around Dharavi to reach out to the population to teach them how to go cashless with Visa.