How a Decade of Collaboration Supported the Growth, Credibility, and Authority of a UK Payments Institution.
Overview
The fintech industry began to emerge in 2008. It was a bold but unproven challenger to legacy financial services. The Emerging Payments Association was founded to help support, organise, and grow the sector into a serious force for good and support its transition towards mainstream adoption.
Thirteen years later, the industry had matured, and fintech challengers had reached the mass market. The Association realised it was time to evolve.
Blue Train Marketing joined the association in 2016, earning a strong reputation from working with fellow members, including Global Processing Services (now Thredd), B4B Payments, and Moorwand.
This case study explores how Blue Train Marketing helped the association reposition itself and evolve past its ‘emerging’ roots, rebrand as The Payments Association, and become a trusted long-term marketing partner for its flagship events.
About The Payments Association
The Payments Association (formerly the Emerging Payments Association) is a UK-based industry body founded in 2008. It boasts a global membership of over 250 banks, fintechs, payment processors, technology providers, and payment innovators. It facilitates collaboration on regulation, policy, and initiatives such as financial inclusion and ESG to positively shape the future of payments. The Payments Association is now the most credible, authoritative voice of the fintech industry with influence beyond its community into government policy and regulatory bodies.
Challenge
After thirteen years, the Association had successfully acted as a catalyst for growth and seen the fintech sector begin to reach maturity. This meant it faced several marketing challenges as it needed to:
- Reflect a changing market with different needs.
- Evolve and scale while retaining its disruptive brand persona.
- Be seen to take a leadership role.
Objective
The challenges were translated into clear objectives that Blue Train Marketing would support:
- Update its market positioning and branding away from its ‘emerging’ roots to support an industry that has broken through to mainstream adoption.
- Create bold and memorable branded content to announce the new name that retains the Association’s disruptive brand persona while reflecting greater authority, influence, and purpose.
- Produce high-quality digital content and focused messaging to promote the growing credibility and unmissable nature of its three annual flagship events.
- Increase active focus and leadership in areas such as regulation, ESG, and financial inclusion.
The decision to rebrand to The Payments Association was a brave one, as it risked losing brand recognition, especially among the industry’s wider stakeholders such as regulators and government bodies. This meant that a clear and memorable narrative was essential to explain the transition and demonstrate continuity of purpose in a new and more established market context.
Strategy: A Partnership, Not a Project
Blue Train Marketing was first engaged by the Association in 2017.
Blue Train’s deliverables have included an SEO strategy and high-performing SEO keyword-driven content. It also created video-first campaign content to announce the Association’s support for its new micro-donation specialist, Pennies, as its fintech charity partner.
In 2021, the association decided to rebrand from the Emerging Payments Association to The Payments Association and asked for Blue Train Marketing’s help with this high-profile and strategic project.
The centrepiece of the project would be a short video to be shown in front of over 1,500 guests at the climax of the Association’s 14th Annual Awards Ceremony at the Grosvenor Hotel on Park Lane, London.
A Creative Approach to Strategic Storytelling
To plan the video and develop compelling marketing messages, interviews were set up between Blue Train Marketing and senior leaders of the Association, including its Director General, Tony Craddock.
The style of the video would need to align with the association’s brand persona of being disruptive with a strong sense of humility and humour.
Blue Train produced a script, storyboard, and creative narrative for the project. The video would feature footage of a child in the early stages of learning to play a violin. A scraping, tuneless assault on the ears evolved into an orchestra playing beautifully as one. The metaphor mirrored the payments industry itself – early experimentation and missteps giving way to a mature, coordinated ecosystem and culminating in an uplifting sense of shared purpose.
The video acted as a clear market signal – communicating maturity, continuity, and increased ambition without abandoning the Association’s disruptive character.
The Association decided the video deserved a big screen premiere. The Curzon Cinema in Soho was booked, where Ben Agnew, CEO of the Payments Association, was joined by Tony Craddock to preview the film with a select group of industry leaders and stakeholders before its public reveal at the Awards night.
Media Partnership & Flagship Industry Events
These events became agenda-setting platforms for the UK payments industry, not simply networking occasions.
After the rebrand project, the Association invited Blue Train Marketing to become a media partner for their annual flagship events. Since 2023, Blue Train Marketing has filmed and created the official digital content from PAY 360, Financial Crime 360, and the PAY 360 Awards.
These events have become cornerstones of the UK payments calendar, bringing together industry leaders, innovators, and regulators.
Blue Train supports these initiatives through the creation of:
- Teaser and big reveal digital assets, including the highly anticipated award shortlist announcement.
- Pre-event campaign content to promote event attendance, sponsorship, and social media activation.
- Production of event video and digital assets, including winner, stakeholder, and sponsor interviews for the association’s use across promotional campaigns.
Beyond Marketing: Project ESG & Shared Values
This work reflected a shared belief that long-term credibility in payments must be built on values as well as commercial success.
Blue Train Marketing supported Project ESG, one of the Association’s strategic projects, on a pro bono basis. This meant not only contributing time to regular project and initiative discussions but also giving its creative resources to promote the group’s work and awareness of environmental, social, and governance initiatives across the payments sector.
This work included:
- Marketing message and video content, including working with senior leaders in the group to align on scripting/messaging and creating fly-on-the-wall style footage of meetings to add interest and engagement.
- Explainer content to encourage the association’s members to use the website resources compiled by the Project ESG team.
- Website development, including planning the resource pages and the creation of supporting copy.
Execution Highlights
Blue Train Marketing helped The Payments Association by:
- Performing a deep dive workshop with the CEO and Director General of the Association to identify a compelling and authentic narrative to underpin the rebrand/renaming decision.
- Storyboarding, scripting, and producing a video that conveyed the strategic narrative of the rebrand in an impactful way, cutting through the chatter at the awards event and engaging the hearts and minds of 1,500+ guests.
- Creating an SEO strategy and blog content to help the Payments Association rank for its high-performing target keywords.
- Capturing high-quality video content from the Payments Association’s three flagship events (PAY 360, Financial Crime 360, and the PAY 360 Awards) since 2023, including pre-planning sessions with the Event Manager to ensure key themes and messages are captured and reflected in the content.
Client Testimonial
The Association was delighted with the rebrand video.
Ben Agnew, CEO of the Payments Association, said, “We are absolutely delighted with the final product – brilliant work that absolutely captured the spirit of the Payments Association and messaging behind the re-brand project. I put the video to the ultimate test by showing it to my 13-year-old daughter. Her exact words were, ‘That is a very cool – I like it! It’s similar to the NatWest adverts’. Entertaining, informative and infectious – perfect!”
Looking Forward: Financial Inclusion & The Payments Manifesto
Today, the partnership between Blue Train Marketing and the Payments Association continues to focus on the future of payments.
Blue Train Marketing’s leadership team have played a supporting role in the Financial Inclusion Working Group, contributing to the development and promotion of the 2026 Payments Manifesto alongside other leading payment organisations such as Cardaq, Mastercard, NatWest, allpay, and more.
This work reflects a continued commitment to:
- Practical policy engagement covering areas such as access to payments, digital infrastructure, and consumer protection.
- Industry-wide collaboration through dedicated working groups.
- Policy advocacy with regulators, government, and political leaders.
- Responsible payments innovation.
As part of this work, representatives from The Payments Association and its Inclusion Working Group visited the Houses of Parliament in January 2026 to share the manifesto and its recommendations directly with political leaders – reinforcing the Association’s role as a credible bridge between the payments industry and policymakers.
Impact
Blue Train Marketing helped The Payments Association by:
- Creating messaging narrative and content to explain its brand transition in a way that “absolutely delighted” the Association’s leadership and captured the hearts and minds of 1,500+ guests at its launch event.
- Communicating the reasons for the rebrand and a new value proposition for members and the industry through a clear and memorable narrative that has helped The Payments Association retain its core membership and grow to represent more than 250 fintech and payments companies.
Takeaway
The partnership between The Payments Association and Blue Train Marketing has evolved over more than ten years.
For Blue Train Marketing, working with The Payments Association has meant shaping how the evolution of the association and the entire sector is communicated – translating industry change into clear brand positioning, strategic and authentic storytelling, content, and campaigns that reinforce credibility and influence.
If you’re looking for a marketing partner with deep payments expertise and a long-term view of brand impact, speak to the Blue Train Marketing team today.
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