BOISE, IDAHO — Goodbuy, the small business rewards platform built for financial institutions, today announced a Best of Show win at FinovateFall 2026, the fintech industry’s flagship conference held this week in New York City. The award is decided by conference attendees, who vote after watching each company deliver a live product demo. Goodbuy’s demo showed how the platform turns everyday small business engagement into a growth channel for financial institutions — one that drives account activation, deposits and interchange through connected community commerce.
The recognition arrives well after credit unions had already placed their bets on the platform. Goodbuy registered as a credit union service organization (CUSO) after launching inside the credit union movement in 2025, and earlier this year a group of credit union partners — including Georgia’s Own Credit Union — backed the company with a $1 million investment, long before FinovateFall’s stage entered the picture.
“Credit unions saw what this could be before anyone else did,” said Cara Oppenheimer, CEO and Co-Founder of Goodbuy. “A group of them signed contracts, invested their own money, and put Goodbuy in front of their members while most of the industry was still asking what community commerce even meant. This week’s win belongs to them as much as it does to us.”
Finovate’s own leadership pointed to the demo itself as the deciding factor. “Financial institutions have traditionally had to build small business engagement from scratch,” said Greg Palmer, VP and Host of Finovate. “Goodbuy is proving there’s a faster way, turning a financial institution’s own local footprint into a ready-made growth channel. Best of Show at Finovate is decided entirely by audience vote, not a panel, and Goodbuy’s demo clearly resonated strongly with our attendees. Congrats to the Goodbuy team on a well-deserved win!”
The FinovateFall win is the latest in a string of recognitions for Goodbuy since Oppenheimer co-founded the company with Cary Fortin in 2021. The platform has previously been named a winner of NACUSO’s Next Big Idea competition, taken the pitch competition at the Reseda Summit, and been selected for the Filene Fi-Lab cohort — a track record that reflects steady validation from both the credit union industry and the broader fintech ecosystem well before this week’s Best of Show recognition.
Oppenheimer brings a different vantage point to the fintech space than many founders in the category. Before starting Goodbuy, she spent close to two decades as a Creative Director at agencies including Omnicom and Interpublic Group, work that shaped her approach to building a platform designed around how members actually engage with their financial institution and their local business community — rather than around back-office banking infrastructure alone.
At its core, Goodbuy solves a growth problem financial institutions have historically had to solve from scratch: building deeper small business relationships without adding headcount or reworking existing systems. Through a white-label marketplace, small businesses gain direct access to a financial institution’s own member or customer base, while members save money by shopping locally. The result is new deposits and non-interest income for the institution, and a stronger foothold in an underserved segment of its portfolio.
Georgia’s Own Credit Union’s early investment reflects a broader pattern among Goodbuy’s credit union backers: financial institutions that saw local small business engagement as an underused growth lever and were willing to fund the infrastructure to activate it, ahead of a wider market consensus that has only caught up this week in New York.
About Goodbuy:
Goodbuy, founded in 2021, Goodbuy is a CUSO and community commerce platform built for financial institutions. Its white-label marketplace, online and in-person, connects FI members with local small businesses, giving those businesses access to a local customer base they can’t reach through traditional marketing. For FIs, the platform drives new business account acquisition and grows existing relationships. Members access discounts for shopping locally at participating businesses, creating value across the FI and the community it serves.
