Pay With Rewards, MasterCard’s innovative technology that expands the ways consumers can redeem rewards, has been selected as the winner of the 2015 PYMNTS.com “Innovation Award for Best New Technology”.  A panel of seven industry pros and internet votes secured the win. You can see a video from Finovate when it was unveiled last year.

The technology is a revolution in the loyalty arena, as it allows cardholders to pay for goods and services with their loyalty points. This will turn redemption on its head, as consumers won’t have to jump through hoops to use the rewards they earn – they can do it at the point of sale. Select issuers are bringing Pay With Rewards to their cardholder reward programs in late 2015.

Nandan Mer, group executive, Loyalty Solutions, says this is a product with something for everyone. “Pay with Rewards enables issuers to strengthen their rewards redemption consumer value proposition and enhance their rewards program profitability. For consumers it provides the ultimate flexibility to use points to make purchases at point of sale. For merchants it enables them to grow sales and revenues by accepting new points currencies for payments without any modification to their point of sale.”