On Thursday, 22nd May, Smart Money People unveiled the winners of the British Bank Awards 2025  during its highly anticipated annual ceremony in London.

The evening celebrated some of the most outstanding names in the UK’s financial services industry, with businesses recognised for commitment to customer satisfaction, innovation, and dedication to making a positive impact on the lives of their customers.

Just in time for the busy summer travel season, KAYAK, the world’s leading travel search engine, and Affirm, the payment network that empowers consumers and helps merchants drive growth, today announced the expansion of their exclusive partnership into Canada.

OpenFX, the FX infrastructure company revolutionizing cross-border payments, today announced its emergence from stealth with $23 million in funding led by Accel, with participation from NFX, Lightspeed Faction, Castle Island Ventures, Flybridge, Hash3 and strategic fintech investors. This milestone follows the company's unprecedented growth from $0 to $10 billion in annualized transaction volume in under 12 months since its stealth launch in early 2024.

Pagaya Technologies LTD., a global technology company delivering AI-driven product solutions for the financial ecosystem, today announced the launch of POSH (Pagaya Point of Sale Holdings Trust), a new asset-backed revolving securitization program focused on point-of-sale financing (“POS”), which will enable Pagaya to be a growth catalyst for point-of-sale providers in the U.S.

Ant International today announced its collaboration with HSBC on the bank’s new Tokenised Deposit Service in Hong Kong. The service will support treasury management with real-time, always-on HKD and USD payments between corporate wallets held by a corporate client at HSBC Hong Kong. The Tokenised Deposit Service is also the first bank-led, blockchain-based settlement service in Hong Kong.

ACI Worldwide, an original innovator in global payments technology, today announced that CIMB Bank, one of ASEAN’s leading banking groups and Malaysia’s second largest financial services provider, has chosen ACI’s payment solution to converge all account-to-account transactions—real-time, ACH, RTGS and cross-border—onto a single future-proof payments platform.

Curve, the ultimate digital wallet, today announced the launch of Curve Pay on iOS, marking a watershed moment in mobile payments. Curve Pay becomes the first payment solution to leverage the newly accessible iPhone NFC interface after Apple's acceptance of the European Commission's ruling on competition concerns, making it the first-ever viable Apple Pay alternative on iOS.

Quant, a global leader in fintech and innovation, today announces the rollout of Quant Flow, an industry-first programmable money and banking infrastructure now available via a white-label solution to banks, institutions and corporates across Europe, the Middle East, and APAC.

BitGo, the leading infrastructure provider of digital asset solutions, today announced the launch of its Crypto-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform—a powerful solution designed to enable financial institutions, FinTechs, and enterprises to seamlessly embed crypto functionality directly into their products. 

Keep, Canada's first all-in-one financial platform built exclusively for small businesses, today announced a C$108 million in new funding as it emerges from stealth mode. The funding includes C$33 million in equity financing led by Tribe Capital, a C$71 million credit facility from Coventure (Treville), and a C$4 million venture debt line from Silicon Valley Bank.