Volt becomes an NPP Identified Institution, boosting its PayTo and PayID capabilities

Volt, the real-time, rail-agnostic money movement platform, today announces its new status as an Identified Institution in Australia. Approved by Australia Payments Plus, the status, which concerns the country’s New Payments Platform (NPP), has been made possible by Volt’s partnership with Banking Circle Australia – the trading name of Australian Settlements Limited, ASL.

In the NPP ecosystem, Identified Institutions can offer services to customers via a sponsoring NPP Participant – in this case, Banking Circle Australia – including access to PayTo and the ability to register and manage PayIDs.

For Volt, Identified Institution status is a sign of its ongoing commitment to the Australia market, with it now having a closer connection to the NPP. This facilitates the fortification of its existing market-leading capabilities, while providing dedicated, long-term infrastructure for its full suite of PayTo (one-off and recurring), PayID and instant payout solutions.

“Becoming an Identified Institution is a major step in scaling our domestic proposition in Australia and, in turn, opening this up to enterprise merchants with an eye on expanding there,” says Kristofer Rogers, Volt’s SVP Australia & New Zealand. “PayTo recurring is the first stage in our plan to offer a global, unified recurring payments offering, while PayID replicates the business-critical cash management functionality we offer in Europe. Achieving this feature parity is important to enterprise merchants, who are now able to benefit from an operationalised global real-time payments network – via a single API.”

With its domestic product capabilities, Volt is continuing to onboard Australian merchants across high-volume verticals:

• Motorhome Republic (part of Webjet Group) integrated PayTo via Volt partner Optty. Now offering a one-click checkout in Australia, it’s signalled its intention to expand to Europe and the UK using Volt’s API
• City Beach, a leading surfwear retailer, also onboarded via Volt partner Optty after recognising PayTo’s potential among its young, digital-first customer base

These merchant use cases validate Volt’s long-term goal of a single integration being the route into real-time payments across multiple domestic schemes; enabling Australian businesses to expand globally and international enterprises easier access to Australia’s fast-growing real-time payments market.

Achieving this goal is dependent on not only facilitating access to domestic schemes, but delivering the functionality enterprise merchants need. To replicate PayTo recurring, Volt is working on SEPA Direct Debits in Europe and exploring commercial Variable Recurring Payments (cVRP) in the UK, following recent regulatory and industry milestones.

“Offering a global, unified recurring payments model is especially vital for enterprise merchants,” adds Steffen Vollert, Volt’s Co-founder and CEO. “While we await further regulatory advancements in the UK and Europe, Australia is the ideal market for us to create a market-ready recurring payments product. This highlights our product-first ethos; we will always create products that our merchants need and, in doing so, hopefully signal to other markets just how important they are.”