Announcing the winners of The Big Bank Theory Awards 2025

The Big Bank Theory Awards by Tearsheet are our premier awards program recognizing and celebrating innovation in banking and embedded finance.

With this awards program, Tearsheet brings together industry leaders, innovative startups, and key incumbent players in the field to acknowledge the companies shaping the future of banking and embedded finance.

We’re pleased to announce the winners of this year’s TBBT Awards.

The 2025 winners of Tearsheet’s TBBT Awards

Best Overall Embedded Finance Platform: Lendflow

Lendflow wins the Best Overall Embedded Finance Platform award for serving as the most versatile embedded credit infrastructure, connecting brands with over 75 capital partners through a neutral intermediary model. The platform’s three-pillar approach—Connect (embedded finance network), Intelligence (workflow optimization), and Automate (AI-powered workforce optimization)—has enabled partners to reduce operational resources while achieving faster speed to funding. With over $1 billion worth of offers made annually through their platforms, Lendflow’s modular architecture allows partners to use individual components or scale comprehensively, supported by 50+ live AI agents that automate manual lending processes from document extraction to applicant communications.

Partner Bank of the Year: Cross River

Cross River wins the Partner Bank of the Year award for pioneering true co-creation partnerships that drive market-defining innovation. As the #1 originator of FedNow and same-day ACH with over 1 billion in cumulative payment transactions, Cross River goes beyond traditional banking services to engineer novel solutions. Their collaboration with Current produced the Build Card and its partnership with Best Egg has funded $34.5 billion in personal loans serving 2.3 million consumers, while their Request-for-Payment infrastructure with Plaid enables instant high-value transactions for companies like Carvana.

Best New Embedded Finance Platforms: Citizens’ Open Banking API

Citizens wins the Best New Embedded Finance Platform award for its unified Open Banking API serving all customer segments through a single integration. Unlike most banks that build separate APIs for each customer type, Citizens’ innovative platform serves retail, business, commercial, wealth, and private banking clients through one API. The platform eliminated 96% of screen scraping traffic while reducing onboarding times from weeks to minutes for thousands of business and commercial clients. Citizens is now one of only four U.S. banks supporting commercial clients with an open banking API, addressing a critical market gap where 85% of businesses use open banking services but most solutions remain consumer-focused.

Best Card Issuing Platform: Brim Financial

Brim Financial wins the Best Card Issuing Platform award for addressing one of the industry’s most persistent challenges: reducing card program complexity and launch times. As the only non-bank fintech in North America to secure a direct Mastercard issuance license from inception, Brim’s modular, API-first platform consolidates multiple legacy vendors into a single stack, reducing time-to-market from 12-18 months to just 6-10 weeks.

Since 2018, Brim has built a diverse client roster spanning banks, credit unions, fintechs, and major brands. Recognized by CB Insights’ Fintech 100 and Datos Insights (#1 for product features), the company is backed by $110M from leading global investors.

Best New Product: US Bank Business Essentials

U.S. Bank wins the Best New Product award for Business Essentials, an all-in-one solution that bundles checking and payment processing to address small business operational complexity. Based on research showing 80% of small businesses need more digital tools and 82% prioritize consolidating their workflow, Business Essentials eliminates the need for multiple vendors through a single digital application. The product offers no monthly maintenance fees, unlimited digital transactions, same-day funding for card sales, and integrated cash flow management tools. Small businesses can accept payments anywhere via mobile devices while accessing real-time insights through the business banking dashboard, streamlining what traditionally required separate banking and payment processing relationships.

Best Banking App: Lumin Digital

Lumin Digital wins the Best Banking App award for reimagining how financial institutions deliver continuous innovation through cloud-native architecture. Unlike legacy systems that require costly maintenance and downtime for upgrades, Lumin’s platform enables weekly product enhancements without service interruption, delivering over 200 production-ready improvements annually. The app’s human-centered design prioritizes intuitive navigation and accessibility, resulting in exceptional user loyalty with 82% of users reporting they “love” the experience. This focus on seamless user journeys translates into tangible institutional benefits, as clients typically achieve doubled asset growth and eight-fold market share expansion while reducing operational costs through decreased call center volume and support requests.

Best Banking Card Product: Fruitful

Fruitful wins the Best Banking Card Product award for reimagining the relationship between spending and saving. Their integrated solution combines a 5.00% APY deposit account with a secured charge card that draws directly from the cash balance, eliminating credit checks and debt risk. The card automatically pays in full each month while earning up to 2% cash back. Through a flat-fee membership model, all members receive personalized financial guidance from experts—support traditionally reserved for wealthy clients.

Serving the Underserved Award: Kikoff

Kikoff wins the Serving the Underserved award for addressing the credit access paradox that excludes consumers with limited credit history from traditional financial services. The fintech unicorn’s latest innovation, AI Debt Negotiation, tackles the debt crisis affecting nearly 70% of their customer base. Their AI-powered tool communicates directly with creditors, and the company claims it has increased its total users credit points by 80 million with an average increase of 84 points for users with less than a 600 score.

Most Innovative Bank: Climate First Bank

Climate First Bank wins the Most Innovative Bank award for redefining what it means to be a financial institution through values-based banking that supports both communities and environmental sustainability. As the world’s first B-Corp-insured, values-based, digital community bank, Climate First Bank has sustainability ingrained into its operational DNA, with every aspect aligned to its mission of “Do the Right Thing for our Planet, our People, our Community, and our Shareholders.” The bank offers competitive ethical residential and commercial solar loan programs with transparent pricing, while donating directly to climate-focused non-profits when new accounts are opened. In just three and a half years, Climate First Bank has achieved remarkable growth to over $1 billion in assets, making it the fastest-growing new bank in the United States since 2009, while maintaining its commitment to social and environmental impact through carbon offset partnerships and certified B-corporation standards.

Best Payments as a Service Platform: Extend

Extend wins the Best Payments as a Service Platform award for transforming corporate credit cards into dynamic payment platforms without requiring businesses to replace existing tools. Unlike the fintech industry’s typical “rip and replace” model, Extend’s “wrap and enhance” approach allows companies to maintain current workflows while gaining advanced virtual card capabilities. The platform recently launched the first fully embedded virtual-card-as-a-service integration with SAP Concur, enabling seamless invoice management within existing workflows and positioning Extend at the forefront of the virtual card market projected to triple by 2030.

Best Banking As a Service Platform: Alkami

Alkami wins the Best Banking-as-a-Service Platform award for delivering exceptional digital banking experiences that drive measurable client success. As the first and only digital banking provider to earn J.D. Power certification for “An Outstanding Mobile Banking Platform Experience” two consecutive years (2024-2025), Alkami ranks in the top 20% of providers assessed by the J.D. Power Mobile App Satisfaction Index. The platform maintains a 4.8 average app store rating with double-digit year-over-year growth in registered users, while achieving exceptional System Usability Scale scores of 99.4% for deposits, 95.8% for transfers and bill pay, and 91.6% for account management. Built on advanced telemetry and real-time user behavior analysis, Alkami’s cross-platform native framework ensures consistent, high-quality experiences across devices.

Best Banking Service Partner: Personetics

Personetics wins the Best Banking Service Partner award for transforming banks from transactional utilities into trusted financial advisors through AI-driven cognitive banking. Their platform delivers real-time, personalized financial guidance to over 150 million customers across 130+ financial institutions in 35 markets.

Personetics claims partners consistently see 10% year-over-year digital sales growth and 5%-8% retention improvements, while maintaining a 4.6/5 customer satisfaction score.