FinTech Magazine has named Arik Shtilman, Co-Founder and CEO of Rapyd, to its 2026 Top 100 FinTech Leaders list. The list profiles the people the publication credits with shaping where the industry goes next, selected for leadership, innovation and transformation. It is the fourth year Arik has been honored in this list since 2022.
The recognition follows two of the busiest years in Rapyd’s history.
Why Arik started Rapyd
In 2016, a business that wanted to sell in a new country usually had to start over. It needed a new payments provider, a new integration and new licences, and it had to learn how people in that market prefer to pay. Doing this market by market was slow and expensive, and it held back companies that already had customers waiting.
Arik founded Rapyd that year to take on that work so businesses would not have to. Rapyd launched as the first fintech-as-a-service platform in the industry, giving a business one integration to accept payments, send payouts and add financial services in markets where it had no presence.
Rapyd’s global footprint continues to grow
Rapyd now supports more than 250,000 merchants around the world.
The biggest change came from the acquisition of PayU GPO’s global payments business, a $610 million deal that closed in March 2025 and is now fully integrated. It brought decades of local scale, licences and banking relationships onto the platform, including direct presence in six core Latin American markets.
Rapyd also moved its entire global business onto one centralised, AI-driven architecture. Real-time fraud prevention, onboarding and process automation now run on that system rather than across separate tools. Rapyd built it in house, which gives the company more control over compliance, monitoring, risk and underwriting.
Today Rapyd offers card acquiring, local payment methods, global payouts and multi-currency accounts on one platform in more than 100 markets, with direct card acquiring in the UK, EEA, LATAM, APAC and Africa.
Where stablecoins fit
Rapyd launched Stablecoin Payment Solutions in 2025. Businesses can accept, settle and pay out in stablecoins alongside cards, bank transfers, cash and eWallets. Arik treats stablecoins as one more way to move money, used where they are faster or cheaper than the alternatives.
Businesses are moving in the same direction. Rapyd’s 2026 State of Stablecoins research found that 76% of business decision-makers believe stablecoins are already mainstream or will be within five years.
Part of a wider run of recognition
Arik’s place on the Top 100 FinTech Leaders follows a strong year for the company. Rapyd was named one of CNBC and Statista’s World’s Top Fintech Companies 2026 for the third year running, placed on the FXC Intelligence Cross-Border Payments 100 for the seventh consecutive year, and named to the Hurun UK Unicorns 2026 list.
Read the full list
Read Arik’s profile and the rest of FinTech Magazine’s Top 100 FinTech Leaders here.