Payment Innovation of the Year
2Checkout (now Verifone) – 2Checkout Monetization Platform
2Checkout (now Verifone) helps businesses accept payments globally from anywhere in the world, and grow digital commerce revenue streams across geographies, business models, or channels. Merchants can orchestrate all sales and orders from a single commerce interface, with capabilities for one-time and recurring sales, consumer sales and business deals, retail goods and online services support, standard and custom deals, self-service, and sales-assisted orders.
A unique aspect of the platform is the ability to work with multiple payment models. Clients can go to market using a Merchant of Record (MoR) model, a Payment Service Provider (PSP) model, or a hybrid of both. Within the MoR model, 2Checkout (now Verifone) is the reseller, being in charge of everything implied by cross-border transactions – payment processing, sales tax management, invoicing, billing, tax, and compliance. The PSP model enables us to handle only payment processing and subscription management.
In the last 18 months, 2Checkout (now Verifone) has worked towards optimizing our platform which brought a multitude of new features and enhancements: streamlined payment methods (iDEAL, Alipay, UnionPay in API, and more), ordering engines, connectors, API, updated reports, updates regarding compliance with local laws and taxes, and more.
APEXX Global – Apexx Payment Orchestration Layer
Founded in 2016, APEXX Global is a multi-award-winning global payments orchestration platform that combines acquirers, gateways, shopping carts and Alternative Payments Methods into a single marketplace and one-stop solution for Enterprise/Tier 1 merchants. APEXX builds an integrated and transparent service that manages the authorisation, processing, and optimisation of transactions.
APEXX takes an agnostic approach to partnerships, working with many different solutions providers across the payments industry. Our approach creates a more efficient and cost-effective solution that cuts through the complexity of e-payments and leaves behind legacy technology systems. Our mission is to help businesses grow by reducing unnecessary costs, increasing conversion rates and simplifying the global payment ecosystem.
Citizen
Citizen is an award-winning fintech business based in London offering cardless account-to-account payments and account verification services. Founded in 2017 by former Worldpay CTO, James Neville, Citizen became a regulated payment institute in 2019 and was one of the first companies licensed to provide payments and identity services enabled by open banking. We now work with companies across a wide range of sectors; companies that are looking for efficient payment options and secure user verification without compromising an excellent customer experience.
One of these companies is VCL Vintners, a whisky cask broker that sources and manages Scottish whisky casks for their network of retail and institutional investors.
Their aim is to make the whisky investment industry, which has historically relied on long-standing face-to-face relationships, more accessible by modernising the way people invest in whisky casks online – while improving their bottom line at the same time. And Citizen were on hand to help. By working together and adopting Citizen as a payments solution back in April 2021, VCL is transforming the whisky investment experience – and their profitability.
Mondu
Launched only in October 2021, Mondu is one of Europe’s fastest-growing FinTechs driving innovation in B2B payments.
Mondu’s Buy Now, Pay Later solutions for B2B enable merchants and marketplaces to offer their customers the most popular B2B payment methods and flexible payment terms in a multi-channel setting, both online and offline, without the financial risk and operational cost. Mondu’s BNPL brings business value to sellers and buyers alike: merchants can sell more risk-free and get upfront payment, while buyers can secure their supply chain, buy more and pay at their convenience over time.
By bringing B2B payments up to par with B2C and putting customers at the heart of the payment flow, Mondu ensures a seamless and state-of-the-art experience.
Since launching, the business has rapidly expanded to five European markets, grown to a team of 140 exceptionally talented people, and raised $90m in equity and debt financing. Mondu is one to watch.
Qi Digital – Smart API
As founder & chief executive officer of Qi Digital, Mann Matharu is a British-born entrepreneur, future technologist, the visionary behind Qi and a thought-leader in the UK blockchain scene.
The word ‘qi’ literally translates as ‘energy’. As a reiki master, Mann lives by the philosophy of ‘qi’ where energy in all its universal forms is destined to travel freely, through space and time, without any barriers. These values align with blockchain technology, with a mission to be open, inclusive and transparent.
Qi Digital is a global technology company, headquartered in London, UK. Leading the way in blockchain innovation and digital currencies, Qi engineers future-technology to provide secure, efficient and accessible payment solutions. Integrating Qi Digital technology, customers from all over the globe can pay for goods and services in cryptocurrencies.
Our ‘legacy-inclusive’ approach bridges the gap between traditional and digital systems, driving accessibility in blockchain technology around the world to transform lives through financial equilibrium. It’s a very utopian view but by creating Qi Digital to help achieve a system of ‘equilibrium’ through technology, we automatically bring people into this new world economy. While setting a new standard for digital payments worldwide.
Violet.io – Universal Integrated Checkout API
Social platforms, already the norm for product discovery, have tried and failed over the past five years to take their experience one step further and reduce the friction between product discovery, intent-to-purchase, and checkout (i.e. native, in-app commerce). People discover products in one place (Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, ChatGPT, Articles, etc.) but then have a broken, affiliate-link based, single-brand shopping experience when it comes to purchase; as they are routed back to individual brand stores for checkout.
Violet collapses the distance between product discovery and product purchase, enabling anybody with an audience (we call them channels) to launch integrated native checkout. Social media platforms, TV/Movies, AR/VR experiences, Metaverse experiences, physical experiences (Airbnb/Hotel/etc) can all power multi-merchant in-app checkout by integrating with Violet’s universal API and list full product catalogs, accurate inventory, shipping and tax rates, multi-currency payment processing and custom commission rate relationships from brands across any ecommerce platform (Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Custom Platforms, Shopify, Magento, Bigcommerce, etc.). Violet unlocks a whole new breed of next generation commerce applications and experiences.
Visualsoft – VS Pay
VS Pay is a brand new to market innovative online payment solution built on Stripe’s global payments technology, which is then deeply embedded within Visualsoft’s award winning eCommerce platform.
VS Pay provides sophisticated features such as unified financial accounting across over 40 global payment methods and includes robust fraud and risk tools out of the box, meaning retailers don’t need to separate applications to different payment providers and improve their efficiency. All this at rates that SMB retailers cannot get directly from providers.
Since introducing VS Pay, Visualsoft has continued to see strong indicators of positive performance for merchants who have migrated from “legacy” payment solutions to VS Pay. Most importantly, conversion rates continue to improve up to 30%, showing that customers are finding the task of paying for orders easier with VS Pay.
Visualsoft recouped its initial investment two months post launch and is already at over 374% of the initial forecasts of revenue.
A dramatic improvement has also been seen in customers remaining on the payment stage of VS Pay’s merchant checkout process, with an amazing up to 65% reduction in payment abandonment. This will help merchants to grow their customer bases, and give customers an outstanding experience.
WinWinX, in collaboration with Solwey
WinWinX is a peer-to-peer buy-now-pay-later platform that combines convenience, security and personalization and empowers buy-now-pay-later transactions between regular people. The platform’s defining feature is its Online TrustScore which utilizes the company’s proprietary rating system to create a user’s score using multiple data points such as their identity, previous WinWinx transactions and the reviews that other users provide.
Reflecting its effectiveness, the upward trend in user engagement and successful transactions on the platform affirms WinWinX’s strong value proposition. A hallmark of the company’s distinct approach lies in the deep understanding and user-focused perspective facilitated by utilizing user personas. This strategy has led to creating a richly personalized platform, evident in integrating features such as hobby categories that resonate with users on a more personal level. The company also employs animation to enhance user responsiveness. A notable example is the animation of the Online TrustScore, making the site feel alive while guiding users to essential features. A subtle background animation further creates a sense of activity without overshadowing the core content.
WinWinX is transforming how users manage their financial transactions — the platform’s trust-building mechanisms, personalized experiences, strategic design choices and receptive approach to feedback underscore this commitment.
