Stanley Tucci fronts Apple Pay’s holiday push with food, family and frictionless payments

Apple Pay has partnered Stanley Tucci for a new holiday social campaign spotlighting how the payment service fits into everyday life, using food and human connection as its emotional hook.

Titled “Can I bring people together with pasta and Apple Pay?”, the campaign follows Tucci as he shops for ingredients in a small Italian town, cooks, and shares a meal with a group of Italian nonnas. All purchases throughout the film are made using Apple Pay.

Created in collaboration with TBWA\Media Arts Lab, the first film will launch on 9 December as a collaborative post on Tucci’s and Apple Pay’s Instagram and TikTok accounts. Additional content will roll out across Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube and Facebook.

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Directed by two-time Emmy winner Floyd Russ, the largely improvised film shows Tucci navigating local markets, unexpected retail locations and the ultimate culinary test, cooking for a group of discerning Italian grandmothers.

The campaign also taps into the social issue of elderly isolation in Italy. According to Italy’s National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), people aged 65 and above make up nearly half of the country’s population living alone.

“I love Apple Pay because it’s so easy to use even for a man of my age. Or especially for a man of my age. I use it to pay for everything. It’s a brilliant thing,” Tucci said.

The collaboration is part of Apple Pay’s broader “Can I… with Apple Pay?” social platform, launched in 2023 to educate audiences on how, where and why to use the service through creator-led storytelling. Previous partners under the platform include Grandma Droniak, Drew Dirksen and comedian Zach Woods.

The campaign follows Apple’s other major holiday push earlier this month with its annual festive film, “A critter carol.” The 2-minute-20-second spot features handmade woodland puppets who discover an iPhone 17 Pro in a snowy forest and turn it into a chaotic a cappella music video set to Friends by Flight of the Conchords.

Directed by Mark Molloy, the film was shot entirely on the iPhone 17 Pro using features such as Center Stage, Dual Capture and up to 8x zoom. The campaign was created by TBWA\Media Arts Lab, with production by Smuggler and Unit Sofa in Prague.

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