What is an Impact Award?

Customer needs and expectations continue to evolve, and financial institutions must strive to stay one step ahead. Their capabilities and the breadth of their product portfolios must go beyond what has traditionally been offered to address new market challenges and capture new opportunities. Aite-Novarica Group’s Impact Awards are designed to recognize and celebrate innovation achieved by companies in the financial services space that leverage technology to disrupt the status quo.

Digital Wallet Impact Awards

Aite-Novarica Group’s Impact Awards for Digital Wallets are designed to recognize and celebrate innovation achieved by digital wallet providers who are changing the way that commerce is done. Award recipients will be industry leaders that identify and implement new products, capabilities, and levels of automation and effectiveness that remove friction and add value to the consumer and merchant commerce experience. They are the pathfinders in the digital payment space.

Categories for Consideration

  • Customer experience: Initiatives leading to improvements in ways that the wallet changes the way customers interact with their world. This can include improvements to look and feel, ease of use/loss of friction, functionality, or enhancements to security.
  • Merchant experience: Initiatives that improve the merchant’s ability to serve their customers or manage their business.
  • Product design: Initiatives that better leverage the form factor to meet user needs, including navigation, GUI enhancements, channel access, security or other design aspects that enhance the value of the offering. 
  • Value-added services: Services available through the wallet that create real value for the user including access to shopping and retail services, functionality not directly payment related that is augmented by the wallet, and promotion/ loyalty functionality.
  • Market adoption: Processes or activities that help the digital wallet to achieve critical mass in the markets served by the initiative.

Best in Class Award
In addition to the categories listed above, there will be an overall ‘best in class’ award recognizing the digital wallet judged to be the best from all the category entries submitted.  

Requirements for Participation
Submissions will be accepted through May 31, 2022 and the following requirements will need to be met in order to nominate:

  • Only wallet providers or nominating individuals with explicit consent from their organizations can submit the nominations.
  • Nominated innovations must be in production.
  • All nominees must be willing to allow Aite-Novarica Group to publicly announce and describe their initiative should they win.

The winners will be selected by a global panel of experts on digital payments and wallets. The winners will be announced during the Mobile Payments Conference on August 22-24, 2022.

Check out the Impact Briefs profiling the winners of our 2021 Digital Wallet Impact Awards:

Customer Experience: VELA
Merchant Experience: Nexi
Product Design (
grand prize winner): Payactiv
Value-Added Services: Ceridian
Market Adoption: MOVii and Comviva