Wahed Investment, a US fintech company with offices in London, New York and Dubai, ran a series of six ads on London underground platforms and on the sides of buses, depicting burning euro and dollar notes in a bid to sell its finance services. The ad campaign ran for two months from September to October last year.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) took action after receiving 75 complaints claiming the ads were offensive. Transport for London carried the ads but they said the material had been reviewed and was not considered problematic, adding that the ads complied with TfL’s ad policy and the CAP Code.

One ad showed a man holding an open briefcase filled with US dollar and Euro banknotes on fire with the strapline ‘Withdraw from Exploitation’, while another poster featured images of two men, including popular MMA fighter, Khabib Nurmagomedov, pointing upwards with their index fingers, and US dollar banknotes on fire. Large text stated, ‘Join the Money Revolution’ above the advertiser’s logo. 

The message on another image of the burning briefcase said ‘Withdraw from Riba’, Arabic for excess, with a tagline including the message that 'charging people to borrow money was once called exploitation'.

However, TfL did tell the ASA they received some complaints about the ads and had paused all campaigns from Wahed Invest pending the outcome of the ASA investigation. The ads were placed by Global Media Marketing.

The ASA banned Wahed Invest Ltd from using the ads as they breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 4.1 (Harm and Offence), which states that ads must not contain anything that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

Defending their use of the images on the ads, Wahed Invest told the ASA that they ‘believed that although their ads were thought-provoking, they were not offensive’.

They explained they were a digital investment platform which allowed consumers who were predominantly Muslim to invest in an ethical manner which aligned with their faith and values.

Wahed argued that ‘the burning of banknotes within their ads was designed to be a powerful visual illustration…to show that, when inflation grew faster than the rate of savings, money was akin to “going up in flames”. They believed all viewers, including those who were not Muslim, would have understood that expression.’

The ASA ruling stated: ‘Regardless of whether viewers would have understood that message or understood it as a defiant act designed to show a challenge to financial institutions, the currencies which were burned in all of the ads were clearly visible as US dollar and Euro banknotes.

‘In the case of the US dollars depicted, in all instances the ads showed the words “The United States of America” in flames.

‘The ads were shown on several sites across the TfL network, which was an untargeted medium, and they were therefore likely to be seen by many people. It was also a service regularly used by tourists.

‘Due to the vast number of people who used TfL services and because London was a tourist hotspot, people from the United States or Eurozone countries would have seen the ads.’

The ASA ruled that ‘the burning of banknotes would have caused serious offence to some viewers. We therefore concluded that the ads were likely to cause serious offence’.

As a result the company was told it cannot use the again in the forms complained of and the ASA told Wahed Invest ‘to ensure that future ads did not cause serious offence, including by featuring images of burning US dollar or Euro banknotes’.