How one company foresaw the fundamental shift in payments ahead of time

Co-Founders of Volt, Steffen Vollert, Tom Greenwood and Jordan Lawrence

In 2019, when open banking was not yet a household term, the founders of Volt, Tom Greenwood, Steffen Vollert, and Jordan Lawrence, were already ahead of the curve. Their visionary approach has given Volt a competitive edge in the fintech industry.

The trio have backgrounds in the world of fintech: Greenwood founded and built IFX Payments, while Lawrence was the founder of Amsterdam payments company PCN. Vollert wrote his graduation thesis about the European Union’s Payment Services Directive (PSD), rules regulating the world of payments, then moved to work at Adyen, one of the world’s largest and most successful payments companies.

The Payments Services Directive 2 (PSD2) was a once in a generation shift in the financial industry. It opened the payments landscape to many banks and new tech players, creating a level playing field that fostered fierce competition and a better user experience. One visionary who saw this opportunity early on was none other than Tom Greenwood, the founder of Volt. With his finger on the pulse of innovation, he had a seed of an idea that would transform how businesses around the world receive payments from their customers. This idea centred around the revolutionary concept of open banking — the key that unlocks real-time value exchange.

Greenwood approached Lawrence with his idea: to build an open payments super gateway that enables merchants across the globe to receive direct, account-to-account payments — in real-time. Lawrence was convinced, and due to his extensive network in the payment industry, knew he had the perfect partner to join them: Steffen Vollert, with whom he had collaborated previously at both Adyen and Zen.com, where Vollert had built a groundbreaking Alternative Payment Method team as well as a fully functioning bank. “It was something of the stars aligning,” says Greenwood. “We all have different disciplines and skill sets, and it’s great how well we complement each other.”

“That’s been and is our major strength,” says Lawrence. “We have a business that is seeing more and more competition by the day, but we still have the best brains in the industry on the team, which is very attractive to investors and the external market.”

Yet not everyone could see the promise of this industry on the cusp of change. “The most important activity we did was collect as many VC rejections as you can,” says Vollert. “The main struggle was we were too early for the market.” Volt, built from prototype to first production in six months, was launched before the official regulatory deadline of PSD2, the European Union’s second directive. It meant that many VCs were focused on infrastructure rather than productisation — which is where the real value of open banking sits.

Not all VCs passed, however. “We knew account-based instant payments were the future,” says Tom Mendoza, partner at EQT Ventures. “There’d been a lot of talk about it in Europe. But it hadn’t taken off. Why not? We understood that was because the way it was introduced from a regulatory perspective made it challenging in certain places. But it was a question of time to happen everywhere.”

Tom Mendoza, Partner at EQT Ventures

EQT Ventures remained bullish on the business case as well as the space, and was proactively looking for investment opportunities in the future of payments. Volt’s unique operating model removed the single point of failure and provided unrivalled reach and smart routing based on bank API performance, conversion and reliability. The team’s expertise in the sector also helped. “We thought that their expertise, coupled with their experience, would make them a winning team,” says Mendoza.

EQT Ventures led Volt’s $23.5 million Series A funding round in June 2021. “The first thing we did was take two weeks off,” says Greenwood. “You’ve just raised all this money, the blood’s pumping hard and fast, and everyone’s excited. It’s not a good time to be making decisions.”

The investment — and the associated support — helped Volt grow, but it was a task that Greenwood still found “daunting”, even though it was his second time building such a large business. “How do you grow an organisation 3x or 4x in such a short period of time, when you’re forming entirely new departments and functions?” he asks. “You’ve just got to start somewhere. It’s like Lego: you build piece by piece.”

The company was 32 people when the Series A round closed. “Now we’re 150,” says Greenwood. “We 4x’d the company in 15 months, it’s a lot”. It’s meant that Greenwood and his co-founders have had to make difficult decisions on how and where to spend their time — something they admit they don’t always get right, with their staff telling them they don’t need to attend some meetings they drop into. “You’re constantly having to assess yourself and your own role, and what is the role you play for the team and the company,” says Greenwood.

That cautious approach has stood Volt in better stead than some of its competitors, says Vollert. “We didn’t overspend and go completely crazy,” he says. “That’s what happened to our competitors, who are now firing people who are not hitting the numbers, because they spent all their money and hired without ever building a process.” Volt’s mantra is controllable structures, procedural hires, and scalable growth, Vollert explains.

It means that Volt has exceeded the revenue of its largest competitor in the space with half the headcount, setting them in good stead for the future. “We are riding the wave of real-time payments, which everyone is jumping on,” Lawrence exclaims. The revolution of real-time payments is in full swing, and Volt is at the forefront, leading the charge towards a more efficient and seamless financial future. It’s an exciting time to be a part of the fintech industry, and Volt is setting the pace for the competition to follow.

"In terms of the total addressable market, the sky’s the limit,” says Greenwood. “Volt is a global business and payments affect almost everyone.”

“With regard to the founding team, we hold each other accountable,” he says, motioning to Vollert and Lawrence. “We’re very honest with each other. We’re each other’s bosses, and will keep each other in line. That’s a really important part of what makes a strong team — and we’ve proven we are one.”