Target audience
Acquirers, payment gateways, PayFacs, ISOs, processors, payment orchestration providers, device manufacturers, ISVs, and other types of merchant service providers, including PayTech and FinTech companies. Merchants may also enter this category directly.
Detailed definition
Best innovation in Retail & Merchant Payments is open to any provider of payment-related services delivered to merchants, irrespective of the geographic region, merchant size or market sector. It includes retailers, hospitality brands, and many other types of businesses or corporations that may offer services or digital goods, in addition to traditional physical products.
Entries are welcomed from merchant acquirers, payment gateways, PayFacs, ISOs, ISVs, device manufacturers and other types of PayTech and FinTech companies. The merchant services may be marketed to individual merchants, to a group of merchants, or delivered as a white label service.
Merchants may submit direct entries for innovative payment services they have introduced. We expect to see examples of a wide range of merchant services.
This category covers all payment methods and types offered by merchants to their customers including card-based, mobile payments, digital wallet, and account-to-account bank payments. Solutions may apply to a single merchant sales channel or form part of a unified commerce offering. The merchant service is not constrained by type, network, currency, value, or technology and can be B2C or B2B.
The solution must be innovative and provide a benefit/value to the merchant, ideally delivering an innovative solution to a specific problem or opportunity.
Payment solutions must be live and out of the test phase at the time of submission. Pilot solutions will be accepted but must clearly be described as such and the judges will be looking for evidence of success in the pilot.
The solution may be running in any country, but more weight will be applied where there is adoption in multiple countries.
Please provide the following information:
Nominee and nominator
- Name of nominating organisation
- Merchant services provider name (entry title)
- Name(s) of nominated organisation(s)
- The nature of the business relationship between you as the nominator and the nominee company
Solution 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 merchant service provides significant benefit/value to the merchant, as well as helps the merchant serve their end customers better.
- The payment solution has leveraged brand, channels, or other capabilities and technologies to deliver innovative solutions to specific problems or opportunities
- The payment solution is truly innovative and has performed well and the submission is supported with quantitative evidence of success from a reliable source
- The solution stands out from its competition 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 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 and customer benefits
