Paytia has been named Most Innovative Secure Payment Technology Provider 2025 in the SME Finance Awards, run by SME News. The award recognises companies bringing genuinely new approaches to payment technology, and we're proud to be this year's winner in our category.
The recognition reflects the principle we've worked to since 2016: card payments taken over the phone should be secure by design, rather than made safe by adding controls after the fact.
What the award recognises
The category rewards a fundamentally different approach to payment technology, rather than an incremental improvement on an existing one. For Paytia, the question has always been a single one — how can a business take a card payment over the phone without the card details ever entering its environment?
Our platform keeps cardholder data out of reach from the outset. Rather than reading their card aloud, the customer enters it on their telephone keypad. DTMF masking suppresses the keypad tones, so the agent cannot hear them, the call recording does not capture them, and no card data is stored in the business's systems. The agent remains on the call throughout, with no transfer to an automated line. The card data never enters the business in the first place.
What it means for our customers
The same design that earned the award is what reduces cost and risk for the organisations we work with. When card data never enters a business, the scope of its PCI DSS obligation falls sharply — by as much as 96% for some of the contact centres we support. That means fewer systems in scope, a smaller annual audit, and materially less exposure in the event of a breach.
It also changes the position of the agent. Agents no longer see, hear, retype or store card details, which removes a long-standing source of operational and compliance risk from the contact centre.
"Our focus has always been on removing card data from the businesses we serve, rather than asking them to manage it more carefully. Being recognised as the most innovative secure payment provider this year confirms that this is the right direction for the market. I am grateful to our team, and to the customers who have trusted us to deliver it."
— Curtis Nash, Chief Executive Officer, Paytia
Behind the recognition
The award follows a year of sustained product development. We extended the platform to support tap-to-pay alongside secure telephone payments, and we launched ProxyPay, which allows a business to add secure card capture to its existing payment integration without rebuilding it. To our knowledge, no other provider had combined these capabilities in a single product.
With thanks to our customers
This recognition is shared with the organisations that rely on us — the contact centres, charities, healthcare providers and retailers that trust Paytia to handle payments securely on their behalf, and the team that builds and supports the platform.
If your business takes card payments over the phone and wants to reduce the compliance burden that comes with them, please get in touch.
About Paytia
We're a PCI DSS Level 1 certified secure phone-payment provider, used by contact centres and customer-not-present businesses across the UK, US and worldwide. Founded in 2016, we're GDPR compliant and Cyber Essentials Plus certified, and built and headquartered in the UK.