Cashfree Uses Soan Papdi To Ask Why Merchants Settle For The Default
Cashfree has brought in the comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath for Mithai Joint Family, a festive campaign that uses the soan papdi box as a metaphor for the payment gateway a merchant ends up with by default.
- Brand: Cashfree. Campaign: Mithai Joint Family
- Face: Biswa Kalyan Rath
- The metaphor: soan papdi, the sweet everybody passes on, standing in for the default choice; the assorted box stands in for choosing deliberately
- Behind it: the company's Zero Payment Gateway Fees offer, with no gateway fees on a new merchant's first ₹20 lakh in sales
- Stated goal: doubling its SMB merchant base by the end of FY27
The Idea Behind Cashfree's Mithai Joint Family
A joke everyone in India has already made. Soan papdi is the sweet that circulates rather than gets eaten, passed from house to house because it was never really chosen in the first place. The campaign puts that next to the payment gateway a small merchant signs up with because it came bundled, or because it was the one they had heard of.
Aditi Olemann, vice president of marketing and communications at Cashfree, said the soan papdi joke works because everybody has lived it, and that the contrast between the two emotions is exactly what the campaign wanted to capture.
Why Now
Because the festive quarter is when a small merchant's payment setup is tested. Volumes spike, settlement timing starts to matter and the cost per transaction becomes visible in a way it is not in a quiet month. Running a switching argument into that window, with the fee waiver attached, is a more precise piece of timing than a generic festive film.
No agency credits have been announced for the campaign.
The film is on Cashfree's YouTube channel. More campaigns.