mpe has a tradition of showcasing payments innovators and emerging stars through its Dragon's Den-style competition. Eleven game-changing start-ups had the opportunity to present ground-breaking ideas for enhancing merchant payments and pitched to an expert jury and the industry's most distinguished audience.
As per Neira Jones, chair of the mpe awards judging panel, Innovation Hub, independent advisor, and international speaker:
“The quality of entries was so impressive that our job was really tough this year! The judges and I first whittled down the competition entries to 11 for the semi-finals start-up pitches on day 1. And what an impressive line-up for this year’s cohort! Anyone could have been a winner, and the quality of the pitches was impressive. Our Dragons, (Keren Aviasaf, Pavel Kaminski, and David Parker) eventually shortlisted three to enter the finals in plenary on day 2: 1-CP, Ballerine, and Torus, but were keen to stress that everyone was a winner this year.
Watching the live scores move every second was like watching a really fast and competitive race, nail-biting stuff! 1-CP eventually emerged as the public vote winner, but for the first time in the history of this competition, it was a really close call, with not much space between all three competitors, confirming our assessment of the quality of entries and their relevance to the ecosystem. After consolidating the public scores and the judges scores, Torus was declared overall winner. With a clear pitch, they demonstrated how payments profitability and revenue recognition can be taken to a brand new level.
And we had two more “firsts” in the history of this competition: firstly, the overall winner turned out to be different from the public vote winner. Secondly, as there was only 1 point difference between 1st and 2nd, and 1 point between 2nd and 3rd, we decided to award a richly deserved “Highly Commended” to both 1-CP (the “Corporate Paypal”) and Ballerine (the “SMB Risk Management Orchestration Platform”), which we had never done before as Highly Commended awards are hard to come by!
All of this was announced at the glittering mpe 2024 awards ceremony. Well done again to all the competitors and we hope they are encouraged to come back next year, and perhaps even enter the main categories, as ID-Pal did, first winning the Innovation Hub competition in 2018, and then winning The Best Regtech award in 2024. Good luck to everyone for mpe 2025!”
