Target audience
Financial services or start-up companies, operating within the financial services/technology sector, incorporated in/after March 2022.
Detailed definition
Leading Industry Start-up is open to any organisation operating in the emerging payments sector. The category is open to new organisations or new divisions of existing organisations that were incorporated on/after March 2022.
Judges are particularly looking for start-up companies that will have a revolutionary impact on the future of payments. The organisation might be described as ‘one to watch’ in 2025/26.
The product/service/technology must be live and out of the test phase at the time of submission. Pilots of the technology will be accepted, but must clearly be described as such, and the judges will be looking for evidence of success in the pilot.
Please note that only start-up companies incorporated on/after March 2022 will be accepted in this category.
Please provide the following information:
Nominee and nominator
- Name of nominating organisation
- Organisation name (entry title)
- The nature of the business relationship between you as the nominator and the nominee company
Description
The judges will assess your entry against the following criteria. You are free to describe the programme and support your case with additional material as you think appropriate. However, we strongly suggest that you do NOT submit generic promotional material and sales brochures. Please limit your submission to a maximum of 1,500 words.
The criteria are:
- The organisation must have been incorporated on or after March 2022, have funding of less than £5 million and must be in the development stage (in Beta or live).
- The organisation’s product or service provides benefit/value to the end users of it
- The organisation delivers an innovative solution to a specific problem or set of problems in financial services or payments
- The programme has performed/is performing well and the submission is supported with quantitative evidence of success from a reliable source
- The organisation stands out from its competition, either through performance, innovation, value to stakeholders or other means as described in the submission.
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 date the company was created
- Numbers around usage and adoption of the service or product the start-up offers up until January 2025
- Growth in use, both historical and extrapolated projections
- How has this transformed the user experience?
