The Innovation by Design Awards program, now in its fourth year, honors the most innovative and disruptive design solutions to today’s business problems. This year’s 47 person judging panel is comprised of the world’s best design minds including experts from PepsiCo, Kravitz Design, RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), Kholsa, MIT and New Yorker. Entries are judged on their functionality, originality, beauty, sustainability, depth of user insight, cultural impact, and business impact—the key ingredients for any innovation.

The competition includes 14 categories:

• Products (mass consumer products)
• Mobile Apps
• 3-D Printing
• City Solutions (FORMERLY SPACES)
• Data Visualization
• Experience
• Experimental
• Fashion
• Products
• Graphic (FORMERLY 2-D)
• Health
• Smart Home
• Social Good
• Students
• Web Design

Stratos was selected as a finalist on the strength of its high impact and habit forming connected card payment solution, which simplifies the wallet experience by combining plastic cards into a single, smart, dynamic card. Credit, debit, loyalty, membership and gift cards can be loaded into the Stratos Connected Card, empowering consumers to make better, more informed payment decisions while simplifying transactions through a familiar, reliable form.

This is Stratos Cards third innovation product award in less than six months since shipping began in April of this year.

“Since shipping in April, we have been thrilled with the overwhelming reviews and awards received by our consumers, media and product experts. Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Award is special because of its experienced panel of judges and unique judging criteria,” said Thiago Olson, co-founder and CEO of Stratos. “We intentionally designed Stratos Card to offer powerful ground breaking payment features built within an intuitive yet highly visual card design. Although Stratos is the most accepted mobile payment card in the market today, we are continuously improving our payment technologies. Our next releases will incorporate EMV, NFC and tokenization technology to ensure a superior user experience with respect to acceptability and security.”

Fast Company will formally award these honors at the 2015 Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York City on November 9-13th.

About Fast Company

Fast Company is one of the world’s leading business media brands, with an editorial focus on creativity and innovation in technology, ethical economics, leadership, and design. Headquartered in New York City, Fast Company is published by Mansueto Ventures LLC, along with our sister publication Inc. and can be found online at fastcompany.com.

About Stratos, Inc.

Stratos is the creator of the award-winning Stratos Bluetooth Connected Card™, which empowers issuers with a new card offering that consolidates an unlimited number of loyalty, membership and gift cards into a single, smart, dynamic card -- digitizing the wallet. With patented security features and acceptance at more places than any other mobile payment offering, Stratos streamlines the payment experience and empowers cardholders to make better payment decisions. Merchants and issuers partnering with Stratos are able to strengthen loyalty and engagement with better data and improved communications to their customers without infrastructure change. Stratos was founded by Thiago Olson, Chris Bartenstein and Henry Balanon and is based out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The company is funded by Toba Capital Partners, Western Technology Investment, Resonant Venture Partners and Hyde Park Venture Partners. For more information, visit stratoscard.com. Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.