2025 Winners

Download 2023 Winners E-book

Best B2B Payment
Experience

Hnry

Hnry is an integrated payments and accounting service for sole traders in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. It automates tax, streamlines payments, and provides every customer with a unique account that turns each inbound payment into an instant, reconciled, compliant event. Hnry also acts as an accountant, filing returns, offering expert support, and providing tools like invoicing, quoting, expense capture, and reporting -redefining the role of payments in enabling the self-employed economy.

Best B2C Payment
Experience

Thunes × GCash: Cross-Border Digital Wallet Top-Up

Thunes partnered with GCash to deliver a seamless cross-border digital wallet top-up for Filipinos abroad. Through Thunes’ global network, users can fund GCash wallets in real time from their bank accounts, creating a convenient, low-cost solution for sending money home. This model demonstrates how fintech can scale inclusion and reshape global remittances.

Best Payments Start-up
Innovation

ShaBaas Pay

ShaBaas Pay is a real-time payments platform designed for small businesses in Australia. With hosted checkouts, QR codes, invoicing, and APIs, it simplifies account-to-account payments, removes settlement delays, reduces costs, and streamlines compliance.

Most Impactful Payments
Industry Innovation

Reap × Thredd

Reap, in partnership with Thredd, built a stablecoin-enabled issuing API to help Web3 businesses access global card rails. With rapid launch timelines, stablecoin-to-fiat conversion, and modular compliance tools, it connects digital asset firms with mainstream payment networks while reducing vendor complexity. 

Outstanding Payments
Industry Collaboration

New Zealand’s API Centre

The API Centre brings together major banks, fintechs, and third parties to co-design standardised open-banking APIs. With collaborative governance, it has delivered secure, consumer-authorised payments and data-sharing infrastructure that fosters trust, innovation, and inclusivity. 

Excellence in Cross-Border
Payments

Thunes 

Thunes’ Direct Global Network powers seamless cross-border payments in multiple currencies and markets. It connects wallets, bank accounts, and cards, reducing reliance on correspondent banking and enabling faster, cheaper, and more transparent global money movement.

Sustainable & Inclusive Payments
Excellence

Walee Financial Services (Hakeem)

Hakeem is Pakistan’s first Islamic digital nano-finance platform, offering ethical, Shariah-compliant financing. Fully digital with e-KYC and AI scoring, it provides responsible access to funds via wallets or bank accounts while promoting financial inclusion.

Payment Fraud &
Risk Excellence

Tookitaki

Tookitaki’s FinCense uses AI and community-led learning to prevent fraud in real time. With high detection accuracy, reduced false positives, and improved efficiency, it supports leading fintechs and payment providers. Its GenAI tool, FinMate, accelerates fraud investigations. 

Innovative Use of Technology
in Payments

KFTC: Segregated Biometric Information Management 

KFTC protects biometric credentials by splitting data into fragments stored separately by different institutions. If exposed, the system re-segments with new ratios, preventing misuse while maintaining uninterrupted access. 

Best Payments
Service

Paymentology

Paymentology supports banks and fintechs with issuer processing services that enable rapid product launches. Its multi-cloud platform, deep market expertise, and around-the-clock support help clients innovate and expand inclusion.

Payments Expert of the
Year

Veronika Bilek — Founder & CEO, EFTlab

 An engineer and passionate advocate for women in technology, Veronika brings 20+ years’ experience across payment infrastructure, cryptography, back-end processing, card issuing, core banking integration, and emerging tech including ISO 20022, keyblocks, and instant payments. Since founding EFTlab in 2012, she’s built a world-class team and delivered EFTsim and EFThub to bridge legacy systems with modern architectures. EFTlab now serves 80+ financial clients in 11 countries, enabling faster time-to-market, automation, and real-time capability across APAC and beyond. In 2024–25 she is leading expansion into Southeast Asia and Europe, deepening ties with regulators, networks, and integrators—helping banks and PSPs future-proof infrastructure, reduce complexity and cost, and drive inclusive, collaborative change.

Lifetime Achievement
Award

Peter Schiesser

Peter Schiesser is a seasoned leader whose career spans decades of innovation across financial services, consumer finance, and electronic payments. With deep expertise in strategy, product development, technology, and operations, he has driven transformational change across diverse markets and cultural environments. Known for uniting commercial vision with technical precision, Peter continues to inspire the payments community through his strategic foresight and commitment to innovation.