Introduction & Challenge
Bacs is the organisation behind Direct Debit and Bacs Direct Credit, quietly handling billions of payments each year. But despite its essential role in the UK’s financial infrastructure, the brand was all but invisible.

The initial request was modest: a refreshed presentation. But what started as a deck turned into a three-year transformation.

In our first workshop, nobody could clearly define who the brand was for, until the Chairman offered a moment of clarity: Look out of any window and you can see the lives we touch.

That insight became the backbone of a renewed positioning, and a more confident voice.

Approach & Strategy
Our challenge was to raise Bacs’ profile without confusing the public-facing brands that relied on its credibility. So we clarified the architecture, defined the audiences, and repositioned Bacs as the invisible engine behind the UK’s secure payments.

The tone? Calm, credible, and quietly authoritative.

Design & Execution
We created a clean, confident visual identity and tone of voice, one that could flex across complex use cases without overwhelming. We developed six sets of guidelines covering brand, sub-brands, forms, switching services, and consumer use over 200 carefully considered pages in total.

The result was clarity. Not just for the design team, but for stakeholders, policymakers, and internal comms.

Outcome & Impact
The rebrand helped Bacs:

• Strengthen trust with regulators and partners

• Gain confidence in PR and internal messaging

• Prepare for its eventual transition into Pay.UK

  …it gave us the language and clarity we’d been missing. It helped everyone inside and outside the business understand who we were and why we mattered…

Melanie Parris, Senior Brand and Campaigns Manager – Bacs