Ep. 148 - Rail-Agnostic Money Movement: Volt's Global Scaling Story

Jasmine Chana (0:05)

Welcome back to The Payments Shed. I'm Jasmine Chana, live from Fintech Meetup Europe in Lisbon. And today, I'm joined by Elaine Smith, SVP of Commercial at Volt. Elaine, welcome to the show.

Elaine Smith (0:15)

Hi, guys.

Jasmine Chana (0:16)

If you could start by telling us a bit about yourself and Volt, that would be great.

Elaine Smith (0:20)

Yeah, this is actually my second time on the podcast, so I'm feeling very grateful to be invited back. I didn't mess up the first time.

But yeah, so I'm the SVP of Commercial with Volt. So we're a real-time money movement platform. So started with real-time payments and then have kind of expanded the business into that full treasury suite of money movement in, money movement out and across 33 countries, UK, Europe and Australia. So yeah, excited to talk with you today.

Jasmine Chana (0:43)

Nice. And you obviously do real agnostic payments as well. What does real agnostic actually mean when you're moving money across PIS, stable points and treasury?

Elaine Smith (0:53)

Yeah, I think it's two-fold, right? So you kind of said it, whether that's digital assets or fiat, we want the merchant to be able to get the money in however they see fit. But the rails that get us there as well, it's irrelevant. So whether that's on pay by bank, domestic rails, whether it's on stable coins, we want to give both the consumer and the merchant the choice to be able to collect that money in, but take that complexity away. If you're a merchant, you don't want to have to do a rail for this payment method, a rail for this country, a rail for this digital asset. With Volt, we kind of collectively bring all of those into one global API, meaning that you can access everything all together.

Jasmine Chana (1:28)

And for merchants, why do they actually care about what payment rail is used?

Elaine Smith (1:33)

Yeah, I don't think they do care. I don't think the rail is important. It's actually the outcome that matters. What is the most cost effective? What is fastest? What is safest? What, as a merchant, am I looking for to achieve? And which rail can I achieve with that? What that looks like, how that's wrapped up is irrelevant. How we're building it is to make sure that it's cost effective, secure, fast, and we can tick all those boxes off of our platform.

Jasmine Chana (1:56)

Amazing. And you've got a global merchant live across all of that, with Australia coming next. What does that prove about the platform itself?

Elaine Smith (2:04)

Yeah, I think it's interesting. When you move into a new market or you launch a new product, it's based on market research or speaking to merchants, and you're kind of taking a punt, right? You're like, oh, this is what we believe will be great. This is what we believe will be the next gen of where our product is going. When we finally have merchants going live, like capital.com, for example, they're using us over multiple markets. They're using multiple products. It's really proving to us that we're making those right decisions of what we're building and how we're rolling out globally. So yeah, we're lucky, and we've got these merchants that are going on the journey with us, so we're grateful for that.

Jasmine Chana (2:37)

Amazing. And what makes a great partner for Volt?

Elaine Smith (2:41)

Ooh, great partner.

I think it's looking beyond the transaction. So Volt started out as a pay-by-bank solution, open banking solution. We want to work with people that is like, how can an experience be better? How can a transaction be faster? How can that money movement be as slick as possible? How can we innovate together? What can we build together? What can we do so the consumer journey is so seamless? I think whether that's partners, whether that's merchants, whether that's some of the banks that we work with, we just want to make sure what we're building together is right for the consumer, so that adoption continues to grow, but also right for the ecosystem that we're innovating and growing and expanding everything we can do together.

Jasmine Chana (3:23)

Okay, and let's talk about Australia, right? Because it's become a really important market for Volt, almost an innovation hub. Why has it become such an important market for you guys?

Elaine Smith (3:33)

Yeah, I've actually lost two of my team. I've emigrated to her at the moment. It's a great place. Yeah, other than losing my team to go work in the Sydney office and somebody in Melbourne as well, it's great. I think Australia really proves that when you have regulation, the banks, the merchants, the payment methods, when all of those come together to make a payment method, it can work. I think in other regions, we see great tech, but not great regulation. In other places, we see great banks, but not the consumer adoption. Australia is that place that has it all, which is pulling it together, which is allowing us to see the most success we've seen in the market. So yeah, we've had our bestment for adoption, for volume, for revenue. Like Australia is a really great market for us and for my team apparently.