Who should enter the ‘Best FinTech for Payments & Payment Processing’ category?

The ‘Best FinTech for Payments & Payment Processing’ award recognizes leading technologies that make it easier, faster, safer or more efficient to send, receive and process payments.

Entries may support consumers, merchants, businesses, financial institutions or other payment providers, and can address the front-end payment experience, back-end processing or the connections between different participants and payment methods.

Technologies could include payment gateways, processors, merchant acquiring solutions, payment orchestration platforms, account-to-account payment services, real-time payments, card issuing and processing infrastructure, digital wallets, payment APIs, alternative payment methods or technologies that improve authorization, routing and settlement.

Solutions may specialize in a particular payment type or provide unified access to multiple methods and providers.

Close up of hotel guest paying contactless with mobile phone at reception desk.

Examples

The payments sector covers technologies operating at many different points between the payer and recipient. Examples include:

Online shopping concept, young woman hands holding mobile phone

Technology responsible for accepting, authorizing, processing and completing payment transactions across physical and digital channels.

Solutions may include payment processors, gateways, merchant acquiring technologies, point-of-sale infrastructure or platforms that enable businesses to accept cards and other forms of payment.

Entries could demonstrate improvements in areas such as authorization performance, transaction speed, merchant onboarding, payment acceptance, operational efficiency or the ability to support large and complex transaction volumes.

FinTech financial dashboard

Platforms that help businesses manage multiple payment providers, methods and routes through a coordinated technology layer.

Capabilities might include intelligent transaction routing, automated retries, provider selection, failover, unified reporting or tools for managing payment performance across different processors and markets.

Effective orchestration can give merchants greater control over their payments architecture while reducing the complexity associated with maintaining separate integrations and helping transactions reach the most appropriate route.

woman using credit card with internet banking mobile app sitting at cafe

Solutions that enable funds to move directly between accounts or make use of faster and real-time payment rails.

Applications may include account-to-account payments, open banking payments, instant transfers, request-to-pay services or infrastructure connecting businesses and financial institutions with real-time payment networks.

These technologies can provide an alternative or complement to established card-based payment methods, giving consumers and businesses additional ways to transfer funds and complete purchases.

Woman Programming Software Applications On Computer

Technology providing the underlying systems and connectivity required for payment services to operate reliably and at scale.

This could include payment APIs, processing engines, authorization technology, switching and routing infrastructure, settlement capabilities or platforms used by banks, FinTech providers and payment service providers to build and operate payment products.

Strong infrastructure solutions should simplify complex payment operations while supporting the speed, availability and flexibility required by the services built upon them.

FinTech digital wallet

Technologies that enable the issuance, management and use of cards, virtual cards, wallets and other digital payment credentials.

Solutions may provide card issuing and processing, tokenized credentials, wallet infrastructure, transaction controls, virtual card creation or tools that allow consumers and businesses to manage how and where payments are made.

Entries may serve end users directly or provide the underlying technology that enables other organizations to offer card and wallet capabilities within their own products.

Hall of Fame: Previous Winners

emerchantpay logo

emerchantpay is the clear winner in this category for delivering a genuinely unified and scalable payments ecosystem that addresses the real-world complexity faced by modern merchants. By consolidating acquiring, gateway, fraud prevention, and data insights into a single cloud-native platform, it removes the fragmentation that continues to hinder efficiency and growth across the payments landscape. The platform’s measurable impact on transaction performance, combined with consistent year-on-year growth and strong merchant outcomes, demonstrates both technical strength and commercial value. This combination of operational excellence and market relevance makes emerchantpay a standout winner at The FinTech Awards."

Annabelle Whittall, The Cloud Awards COO

Best FinTech for Personal Banking, Personal Payments, and Money Management 2026, emerchantpay

Areas to Highlight in Your Submission

Judges score nominations across these five key areas:

  • Innovation: The features or technology that makes your payments solution unique - or transformed your market.

  • Impact: Evidence of the positive effect your payments solution has brought to your customers.

  • Scalability: How your solution grows or adapts to changing business needs, without significant upgrades or overhauls.

  • User Experience: How intuitive your payments solution is to use for users of varying roles or skill levels.

  • Relevance: What makes your solution a worthy winner in this particular category.

Although not formally scored, focus on these areas specific to this category, can help your nomination stand out:

Performance

Speed, consistency and success the solution processes payments, including minimizing unnecessary declines, delays or failures.

Choice

Enabling appropriate payment methods, channels or rails to meet the differing needs of consumers, merchants and businesses.

Resilience

Maintaining secure and dependable payment services under high transaction volumes, changing demand.

More FinTech Awards Categories

Next Steps to Enter The FinTech Awards

To enter this FinTech Awards category, or any other category in The FinTech Awards, please follow these three simple steps:

  • Download the entry form. Open up the ‘FinTech Awards Simple Form’ document.

  • Complete your form. You only need to complete the form once, even if entering multiple FinTech Awards categories.

  • Submit your entry. Head to the ‘Submit Now’ section on our website, select ‘The FinTech Awards’ and the category/categories you are entering from the list, upload your form and any other materials you would like the judges to review, and process your fees.

The FinTech Awards is a program from The Cloud Awards. Since 2011, we’ve been helping organizations across the globe gain the recognition they deserve for market-leading innovation in the cloud computing and software sectors.

For a detailed breakdown of all the benefits you receive as an awards entrant as either a shortlistee, finalist or ultimate winner, please see our Why Enter page. If you have any questions on this category, please Contact Us.