The prestigious award for the Best Payments Service, recognising excellence in Gateway (GW), Point of Sale (POS), Payments Processing, Merchant Accounts and other payment services providers. This award celebrates innovation, reliability, and efficiency in facilitating seamless transactions, empowering businesses to thrive in the digital economy.

The award celebrates companies or platforms that demonstrate outstanding performance, innovation, and reliability in various aspects of payment services, such as the examples below:

• • Global Reach (GW): The recipient of this award could have a robust global network, enabling seamless transactions across borders. They may excel in offering secure and efficient payment solutions that cater to diverse international markets.
  • Point-of-Sale (POS) Solutions: The winning service might be distinguished by its innovative POS solutions, which streamline in-store transactions for merchants and provide a frictionless experience for customers. This could include advanced hardware and software integrations, user-friendly interfaces, and support for various payment methods.
  • Payments Processing: Exceptional payments processing capabilities. This involves fast and reliable processing of transactions, real-time reporting and analytics, robust security measures to protect sensitive data, and integration with various payment gateways and networks.
  • Merchant Accounts: The recipient of the award could excel in providing merchant account services tailored to the specific needs of businesses. This may include customisable pricing structures, dedicated support, transparent fee structures, and tools for managing transactions and analysing sales data.

Overall, the Best Payments Service award acknowledges excellence in providing comprehensive, reliable, and innovative solutions for businesses and consumers alike in the rapidly evolving landscape of financial technology and transactions.

The category covers all payment methods and types offered to customers including card-based, mobile payments, embedded finance, digital wallet, and account-to-account payments. The solution should be innovative and provide a benefit/value to the merchant/customer, ideally delivering an innovative solution to a specific problem or opportunity.  

This award is open to any provider of payment-related services in the APAC region, including fintechs, banks, retailers, hospitality brands and many other types of businesses or corporations that may offer services or digital goods in addition to traditional physical products.

Entry eligibility

• The services must be operationalised in one or several Asia Pacific markets.
• Pilot solutions will be accepted but must clearly be described as such.

To make a submission please provide the following information:

Nominee or nominator

• Entry name
• Name of nominating organisation 
• Name(s) of nominated organisation(s) 
• The nature of the business relationship between you as the nominator and the nominee company’s solution description 

Submission format

Your entry is done digitally via APAC Payments Excellence Awards Website, by submitting a written description of your value proposition/solution/initiative using selected category criteria. Each criteria in your submission will be evaluated and scored by judges in your Category Judge Panel. Each criteria have a 300-word limit.

Provide as much information as you can and quote the source of that information to describe the solution, success measures and what was achieved. Note that no attachments are allowed, and website links will not be seen as part of a submission.

Best Payments Service Judge Criteria

Describe your Innovative Merchant Service solution under each criteria section.

1. Solution description

Describe the innovative initiative/solution, including the issue/problem statement, set goals and what has been developed. Is it part of a payments service, product, or process? Was the solution offered to a single provider in the market or to a wide range of companies? Include timelines.

2. Innovativeness

What challenges did the existing solutions encounter? How did you identify the problem statement? How did you conceive the solution, approach towards building the solution, improved solution, or disruptive solution, use of emerging technologies, etc? Are any inventive or innovative aspects developed to bring the product or service to market? How has your initiative improved the delivery of the service or product?

3. Desirability

Describe the underserved or requested need in the market for your solution. Where and how were there improvements in outcomes for customers and end-users? What positive end-user and customer feedback have you received?  Reduction of cycle time for customers, frictionless, secured, convenience, customer satisfaction, adoption rate, time to market, business results, etc. Note: The customer is B2B e.g., a merchant and the end-user is an individual using the service.

4. Viability and future potential

What is your competitive advantage? What distinguishes your solution from others in the market? Who is the direct and indirect competition? How is your business model better than others? How the solution offered stands out from its competition (e.g., through performance, innovation, and value to stakeholders). What is the growth potential (organic and cross-sector), potential to address financial exclusion, readiness to embrace new technologies, and potential to expand into new markets? 

Evidence of success/metrics 

Please provide as much information as you can and quote the source of that information. Such information might include the following, but this is not an exhaustive list and in each case the judges will be looking for evidence that supports your claims about the key benefits of the programme: 

• The length of time the merchant service has been live.
• The number of transactions performed in the past year. 
• Growth in use, both historical and extrapolated projections. 
• Feedback from merchants as to their experience/Customer benefit? 

Innovative definition

To be defined as innovative we are looking for the creation, development and implementation of a new product, process or service, which has improved efficiency, effectiveness, access or competitive advantage. The entry is detailing something new or has a new approach to an existing challenge.

Target audience 

Submissions can be from Payment Service Providers (PSP), payment gateways, payment facilitators (PayFacs), Independent Sales Organisation (ISO), payment processors, device manufacturers, Integrated software vendors (ISVs), and other types of merchant service providers, including PayTech and FinTech companies. Merchants may also enter this category directly.