The winners of Fast Company’s 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards were announced May 3, honoring clean technology, innovative corporate initiatives, brave new designs for cities and buildings, and other creative works that are supporting the growth of positive social innovation, tackling social inequality, climate change, and public health.

QuickFi provides business loans to creditworthy, small and medium businesses (SMBs) in the U.S. QuickFi offers nearly instant, self-service, term financing to business equipment buyers, and QuickFi is available 24/7 through a mobile application.

Creditworthy SMB borrowers use QuickFi to obtain low-cost, self-service equipment financing and leasing for new business equipment in minutes (instead of days or weeks), at low fixed interest rates without fees or hidden costs. All QuickFi term loans are accompanied by disclosure of annual interest rates, even though such disclosures are not currently required for business loans under U.S. law. QuickFi underwrites based on national, third-party credit scoring systems, moving small business lending toward a fairer, more color-blind, gender-blind and location-blind delivery model.

Transactions are completed from anywhere, on QuickFi’s patented, 100 percent digital, self-service mobile platform employing drivers’ license authentication, facial recognition, artificial intelligence/machine learning, blockchain and other advanced technologies.

Now in its sixth year, the World Changing Ideas Awards showcase 39 winners, 350 finalists, and more than 600 honorable mentions—with climate, social justice, and AI and data among the most popular categories. A panel of eminent Fast Company editors and reporters selected winners and finalists from a pool of more than 2,997 entries across transportation, education, food, politics, technology, health, social justice, and more. In addition, several new categories were added this year including climate, nature, water and workplace. The 2022 awards feature entries from across the globe, from Switzerland to Hong Kong to Australia.

Fast Company’s Summer 2022 issue (on newsstands May 10, 2022) will showcase some of the world’s most inventive entrepreneurs and companies tackling global challenges. The issues highlight, among others, probiotics for coral reefs, easy-to-assemble kit homes for refugees or disaster survivors, a 3D printed vaccine patch, an electric truck, a system to heat homes from the waste heat of a name-brand factory, and prosecutor-initiated resentencing for overly long prison sentences.

“Small and medium size businesses (SMBs) drive the U.S. economy, and they must acquire new equipment to grow,” said Bill Verhelle, CEO of QuickFi by Innovation Finance USA. “QuickFi partners with global manufacturers to offer SMB equipment buyers a transparent and efficient way to acquire the new equipment they need to grow,” said Verhelle.

“Lease or loan transactions that previously took days or weeks to complete, can now be done in minutes on the borrower’s mobile device, 24/7, from anywhere,” Verhelle added.

“We are consistently inspired by the novelty and creativity that people are applying to solve some of our society’s most pressing problems, from shelter to the climate crisis. Fast Company relishes its role in amplifying important, innovative work to address big challenges,” said David Lidsky, interim editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “Our journalists have identified some of the most ingenious initiatives to launch since the start of 2021, which we hope will both have a meaningful impact and lead others to join in being part of the solution.”