Hello Clever Wins Three Finnie Awards, Including Fintech Leader of the Year

WHY THIS MATTERS

The dominant performance of Hello Clever at Australia’s annual Finnie Awards highlights the accelerating commercial adoption and geographic expansion of real-time account-to-account (A2A) payment architectures. Historically, international card networks and legacy electronic clearing systems have dominated the retail and business merchant transaction landscapes, burdening businesses with heavy processing fees and long settlement delays. By leveraging rapid payment infrastructures like Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP) alongside open-banking protocols, agile fintechs can entirely bypass standard merchant card networks to settle transactions instantly. Real-time, instant-settlement networks are transitioning from localized payment experiments into vital components of global cross-border financial plumbing, offering companies a low-fee framework to protect operational margins during tight economic cycles.

Global real-time payments technology business Hello Clever has taken home three major awards at Australia’s annual Finnie Awards.

Hello Clever was awarded the Finnies for Best Workplace Diversity, Excellence in Establishing a Global Presence and FinTech and its CEO Caroline Tran winning Outstanding Fintech Leader of The Year. The company won the most Finnies of any business in the 2026 awards. 

The prizes mark Hello Clever’s best performance at the Finnies to date, with the business securing Emerging FinTech of the Year in 2023, and Tran winning Female Fintech Leader of the Year in 2025. 

“We always said 2026 was going to be a huge year for Hello Clever, and these award wins confirm it,” Hello Clever CEO Caroline Tran said. 

“Hello Clever is going from strength to strength, expanding to the United States, Japan and South East Asia within the past 12 months and securing an Australian Financial Services Licence last November. We’re only getting started, there’s still so much to do.”

“Real-time payments remain a blind spot within the global payments ecosystem, and we’re thrilled to not only be bringing this trend to light, but also working towards a global leader in the payments sector in the process.”

“It’s also an incredible honour to be named Outstanding Fintech Leader of the Year. I’ve met and worked alongside some incredible executives in this space, to win this award is a career highlight of mine. It’s incredible motivation for both me and the business as we have our greatest year to date.”

FF NEWS TAKE

Hello Clever has established itself as a leading force in the Australian financial technology sector, taking home three premier honors at the 2026 Finnie Awards—the highest tally achieved by any single firm in this year’s cycle. FinTech Australia recognized the real-time payments platform for Best Workplace Diversity, Excellence in Establishing a Global Presence, and Outstanding Fintech Leader of the Year for Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Caroline Tran. This strong performance follows Hello Clever’s aggressive cross-border push over the past twelve months, successfully deploying its automated instant checkout technology across the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Backed by an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) secured last November, the firm is utilizing its unified, API-driven liquidation engine to eliminate payment blind spots for global merchants and capture expanding transaction volumes in highly competitive payment corridors.