In 2022, the world lost $6.9 billion to online fraud and that number is only growing. After a 2022 survey, Visa found that about one third of consumers are unable to identify and avoid potential online fraud. As payments get more dynamic, and fraudsters more complex, consumers are becoming increasingly vulnerable to attacks.

But the brand noticed that people only learn that they should not share their passwords and OTPs, and that they have to be careful with unknown websites AFTER getting scammed.

As the world’s leading financial services provider and a champion of online security, Visa needed a way to address its consumers at the ground level. The objective: to get customers to learn how they could protect themselves before it was too late by raising awareness of and participation in educational content.

Our key insight came from qualitative analysis of victims of fraud – where we discovered that users rarely fall for the same trick twice; once they have been scammed they are exponentially more aware of the dangers and techniques to look out for in the future.

It led us to conclude that cyber scam victims may learn late, but it is still learning.

So we decided to celebrate their enlightenment in a way that could warn others. We identified popular influencers who had been victims of cyber scam and invited them to Visa’s first ever graduation ceremony. The Class of 2022 raised awareness of the fact that online fraud can happen to anyone, even the region’s most influential.

We also told people that learning didn’t have to come as such great costs by creating an online platform where people could Learn The Easy Way, Never The Hard Way with Visa.

Visa’s 2022 Stay Secure survey gathered insights from thousands of consumers and found that one in three struggle with recognizing a fraud or scam. This is significant considering that nearly half of respondents use more digital payments since the onset of Covid-19.

With more payment services moving to online platforms and apps, the number of consumers paying online is also spreading to more demographics creating a target audience that consists of tech-savvy Gen Zs, millennials, young families and middle-aged online spenders.

We used social media platforms that were relevant to all our TAs and leveraged influencers that spanned across several interest groups including gaming, fashion, lifestyle, pop-culture and more. Because of this, we were able to raise awareness through entertainment, speaking to our consumers in a native way, and following up every communication with a call to action – Learn the easy way with Visa.

We invited influencers who were victims of cyber scams (Kris Fade – UAE’s #1 radio host, Ahmad Nasheet – one of the GCC’s most influential gamers, fashion and lifestyle icons – Manal Marvelous and Nada Baeshen and content creator, Mohanad Al Hattab) to Visa’s graduation ceremony hosted at HQ on 13th October 2022.

Except, we didn’t tell them why we were honouring them.

As we live streamed the event, our graduates soon caught on. They weren’t too happy but their followers loved it.

KOLs shared the event with their followers, hosted Q&As and asked people to share their scam stories so we were able to leverage Visa’s online audience and the influencers’.

They encouraged everyone to visit our website and take the Visa Stay Secure Masterclass, taught by the influencers. Once consumers learned the easy way with Visa, they were awarded with certificates of learning that they could share.

Our event garnered 130.5 million impressions and 46.7 million views, getting more people to become aware of cybersecurity than any previous Visa Stay Secure campaign.

We achieved effective engagement throughout our communication with over 1.3 million microsite visits, exceeding initial campaign targets.

But most importantly, 21,192 people graduated the easy way with Visa on our online masterclass.