Yaspa: The new name for Citizen.

We’re delighted to announce that in October 2023 we will be formally rebranding under the new name of Yaspa. It’s a name that’s short and simple, just like our award-winning payment method, and one that’s unique to us.

‍Why is Citizen rebranding?

When the business was launched in 2017, our focus was on building trusted identities for individuals - citizens. Open banking has been a core part of delivering that data, and that trust, and we have seen extraordinary success on the payments side. The idea of using data to inform trust is still core to our proposition - but there’s no getting away from the fact that ‘citizen’ is a generic term, and there are several other large ‘Citizen’ brands out there, including in financial services. 

As consumers continue to get more familiar with open banking payments, and start to recognise their favourite payment methods, we decided to develop a new name that was unique to us.

‍Why Yaspa?

We were looking for a name that was simple, memorable and easy for non-English speakers to pronounce. Working with both external agencies and our own teams, after much brainstorming the word ‘yaspa’ took seed. Its constituent letters reflect what we do ‘PAY’ and how we do it ‘ASAP’, and it has a feel that is as friendly and approachable as our business customers find us to work with. We’ve nurtured it gently over the last few months and it has continued to stand strong. So now’s the time to get it out there and let Yaspa flourish!

What’s going to change?

Just the name! Our wider look and feel will stay the same for now. Our payment tools will be updated with Yaspa, and our customers will receive newly branded assets for links and promotions. But otherwise, it’s just business as usual, allowing us to focus on continuing to design, build and deliver brilliant payment and identity solutions.

If you’ve any questions for our marketing team, just contact us here. Otherwise, thanks for dropping by and coming with us on this next phase of growth. 

‍PS Interesting Yaspa facts

• Nothing is ever entirely unique. We were delighted to find we share our new name with a Nepalese village (somewhere for the next team away day).
• One of our starting points was the related sounds ‘caspa’ and ‘gaspa’, from ‘gizba’ - an old Hebrew word for treasurer. 
• A recent YouGov survey we conducted showed that particularly among the under-50s, when put head-to-head, Yaspa felt more memorable than Citizen as an online payments brand. And that is what we’re after.