2026 Tekkie Award Winner for CUSO of the Year: Payfinia

By W.B. King

With the U.S. instant payment transaction volume forecasted to reach 2.29 billion by 2031, marking a 38% annual growth from 2024 to 2030, consumers and businesses alike are seeking to adopt the latest and greatest in instant payments. The Portland, Ore.-based CUSO Payfinia caught the attention of Finopotamus Tekkies Award judges for building a better mousetrap.

“I was in my office when the email came through, and I'll admit it stopped me mid-task. My first reaction was pride, not for myself, but for the team at Payfinia and the credit unions who bet on us early,” CEO Keith Riddle told Finopotamus about learning his team won the 2026 Tech CUSO of the Year Award. “The win validates a bet we made before the CUSO's official launch in 2024: that credit unions deserve the same instant-payments capabilities as the largest banks, delivered through a model they actually own.”

Counting 25 credit unions as customers, the CUSO delivers a shared, open infrastructure that modernizes payments while preserving institutional control, reducing operational burden, and accelerating innovation across the credit union ecosystem, Riddle explained.

“Credit unions were watching the payments landscape shift under their feet. FedNow had just launched, RTP was scaling, and yet most credit unions and community institutions had no realistic path to expand beyond basic receive services on either network,” Riddle replied when Finopotamus asked what gave rise to the CUSO.

“The expertise, the integration lift and the compliance burden were simply out of reach at their scale. At the same time, they were losing the member payments experience to big-tech wallets and paying a premium for legacy rails with real fraud exposure,” he continued. “Payfinia was built to close that gap through a CUSO model, so credit unions could reach parity without surrendering ownership of the experience or the economics.”

Full Access to Funds

Payfinia offers Instant Payments Xchange (IPX), an open, API-driven payments platform that enables credit unions, regardless asset class, to access instant payment rails through both the FedNow Service and RTP network for 24/7 credit transfer "send" and "receive" functionality, Riddle explained.

A core and digital banking-agnostic solution, Riddle added that IPX allows community financial institutions to deploy instant payments without replacing existing systems. This allows the solution to connect to digital banking platforms, fintechs, and third-party services through a unified API gateway, enabling seamless integration and rapid deployment – often within 90 days for receive capabilities and approximately 180 days for send functionality, he added.

“IPX is designed to meet the evolving money movement requirements of credit unions and their members, enabling institutions to easily deploy instant payments and give members the ability to send and receive funds instantly with immediate, full access to funds,” Riddle shared. “IPX supported the first ‘send’ transaction on FedNow, positioning Payfinia as a foundational enabler of U.S. instant payments infrastructure.”

Moving Money in Real-Time

Like all CUSOs, Riddle explained that Payfinia’s model embraces cooperative principles applied to technology. When credit unions pool resources, they can solve problems that would nearly be impossible to achieve alone, which Riddle said underscores the “people helping people” movement. “Instant Payment Xchange puts that philosophy to work. It's certified on both FedNow and RTP, plugs directly into existing digital banking, and lets a member move money in real-time as a native experience. The results speak for themselves.”

As an example, Riddle referenced the $9.5 billion Dublin, Calif.-based Patelco Credit Union, which supports 550,000 members.  “They went live in under 80 days, and we see 53% lower fraud per dollar versus same-day ACH, and 10 times fewer support calls than alternative money movement workflows,” he noted.

The cooperative approach isn’t for credit unions alone. Riddle noted the CUSO’s collaboration with the Philadelphia-based Matera, a fintech that enables QR code-initiated payments aligned with emerging Accredited Standards Committee X9 (designed to make money transfers safe, fast, and clear across the U.S. financial system). “Members can scan a code within their existing banking app and initiate secure, real-time payments without exposing sensitive account data or relying on external wallets or portals, he said.

“Security is foundational to IPX. The platform incorporates device-level identity binding and embedded fraud detection, enabling real-time protection that scales with transaction volume,” Riddle continued. “AI-assisted automation and testing further strengthen reliability and speed of deployment, ensuring credit unions can safely operationalize instant payments at scale.”

Remaining at the Center of the Modern Payments Ecosystem

As more credit unions learn about the power and promise of IPX, Riddle said C-level executives are realizing the solution is an ownership opportunity, not just an add-on service.

“Looking ahead, 2026 is about breadth and depth: expanding our money movement domain expertise through a Zelle Technical Integrator model, scaling Paze wallet enablement and our QR payment workflow, and enhancing our presence through progressive innovation consortiums such as the Circuit Fintech Accelerator," he told Finopotamus. “The through-line stays the same, keeping credit unions and community institutions at the center of the modern payments ecosystem rather than on its edges.”