UK open banking fintech unicorn TrueLayer recently rebranded to signal the company’s shift from a bank data connector to a fully integrated global "payments network" provider. We spoke to Mirta Rotondo, VP of Brand & Experience Design at TrueLayer, to find out more about it.
TrueLayer is one of Europe's leading open banking payment providers. In 2021, the fintech achieved unicorn status after a $130m funding round backed by the Irish-founded payments giant Stripe.
Earlier this month, TrueLayer launched a new completely refreshed brand identity titled "never before" to better reflect its mission of changing the way the world pays. The rebranding emphasizes the company's growth from merely connecting businesses to bank data to now connecting banks, businesses, and consumers through a comprehensive payments network. The new brand identity incorporates nature-inspired textures and Bauhaus shapes to represent different connections within the network, creating a visual language that is both tangible and evocative.
The rebranding campaign was led by TrueLayer's in-house brand team, with support from external agencies for specific details. Despite the challenges faced during the rebranding, such as changing business priorities and balancing time constraints, the team successfully delivered a brand they are proud of.
With TrueLayer's sights set, we wanted to capture their excitement, so we spoke to Mirta Rotondo, the VP of Brand & Experience Design at TrueLayer, to get an insight.
Read Mirta's complete Q&A below.
What was the motivation for TrueLayer's rebranding?
At TrueLayer, we’re on a mission to change the way the world pays. In the years since we were founded, we’ve become a lot bigger and a lot bolder about this mission. Where we once connected businesses to bank data, we now connect banks, businesses and consumers — creating a comprehensive payments network built for growth.
We needed our brand identity to reflect the journey we’ve been on as a company. To tell the world where we’re going and help us get there faster.
What’s your new brand identity all about?
Our software products are intangible objects. And although we’re extremely excited about them, they’re sort of lifeless APIs. So we wanted to use this opportunity to bring them to life — give them a form. To do this, we’ve created a series of nature-inspired textures that could both evoke tactile experiences and describe key elements of our business. Water to evoke a sense of flow, and ease. Blossoming greenery for growth. Layered marble to represent our infrastructure, and an explosion of particles for our network.
We’ve also brought in a series of Bauhaus shapes to represent different connections in the network — between a bank, a business and an end user. They are like portals: a new way for data to be exchanged, for money to move.
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What was the branding creative process like? Did you work with an agency or was it all an in-house effort?
We started with a question: what does the future look like? We kept coming up against dystopian visions, which don’t align with our outlook. We like to think of a world built on harmony, where everything is better connected. Where we landed was the vision I set out earlier: natural, bountiful, tangible.
The creative process was led by TrueLayer’s own brand team, from ideation to final execution. We felt this was the best way to ensure that the design we delivered aligned with our narrative, and addressed the various pain points we experience trying to execute at speed.
We did bring in agencies to help with some specific details. Shout out to DEPT for their help on our website and Media. Work for their support on 3D textures.
Have you faced any challenges during the process? If yes, what were they and how did you tackle them?
Is it even a rebrand if you don’t have a series of existential crises? We had our fair share: changing business priorities, team structures, product hierarchies, and aligning our creative vision with design decisions.
Time is never on your side with these things. Launching a rebrand and running business-as-usual events, anticipating land dates and planning the switchover. Balancing this ambiguity was hard for the team, but ultimately with empathy, clarity of intent and — from time to time — some executive decisions, we were able to deliver a brand we are extremely proud of.
What does the activation campaign look like? How are you planning to communicate the changes with your existing customers?
We hope our new brand will mostly speak for itself. The goal here has been to bring clarity and differentiation to our customers. So rather than a big launch, our aim has been to create a better experience for them.
We’ve already received very positive feedback following our initial rollout. But this is just the beginning. Launching a new brand isn’t a one-off, but a continuous process. We’ll continue assessing and adapting our brand to make sure that what we’re doing keeps working in the long term and with our big future plans.
What’s next for Truelayer? And what are your marketing priorities for 2023?
This rebrand marks the start of an exciting new chapter for Truelayer. We’re beyond excited to continue innovating and delivering value to our network. You’ll have to watch this space for what we have planned.
Our mission remains the same: we’re changing the way the world pays. And we’re unwavering on this. In fact, with what we have in store from a product standpoint, we’re more confident than ever before in our ability to deliver on that promise.
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