Vibe Cheque: a communications campaign encouraging healthy spending habits among young adults when interacting with buy-now-pay-later payment arrangements

Abstract

Vibe Cheque is a financial literacy campaign launched in December 2023, empowering young Singaporeans aged 18 to 29 to adopt healthy spending habits when interacting with “Buy-Now-Pay-Later” (BNPL) payment arrangements. Within three months, the campaign met all seven output objectives and raised behavioural intention by 11.9% after exposure to the campaign. This paper identified the worrying trend of overspending enabled by BNPL services and established the campaign’s strategic communications approach to tackle the issue. Our literature review discusses the growing popularity of BNPL in the context of problematic spending trends, which encourages overspending and debt accumulation among Singaporean young adults. Guided by the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), insights from the formative research informed the development of tactics that focus on increasing young adults’ positive attitudes towards adopting healthy BNPL spending habits, willingness to use trust-based resources, and their confidence in implementing healthy spending behaviours. Vibe Cheque uses an engaging and relatable approach and a diverse range of tactics across all three phases, Introduce, Engage and Empower. This includes a video series, On A Scale, which presented open conversations between young adults on spending, our budgeting ChequeBot which allow users to track their expenses on Telegram, and an interactive exhibition and roundtable discussion, Vibe House, which brought together zillennials and financial literacy experts to learn about healthy BNPL spending. The campaign partnered with the Institute for Financial Literacy (IFL), Singapore FinTech Association (SFA) and Atome, who contributed as content partners.