Volt

Credit card payments have dominated e-commerce for decades not because they are the best method, but because they were the first to scale globally. For merchants, however, the cost is steep: high fees, slow settlement times, chargeback risk. For consumers, card data passes through a chain of intermediaries that increases fraud exposure. Volt, a British startup founded by Tom Greenwood, Jordan Lawrence, and Steffen Vollert, has built an alternative based on the principles of open banking. Volt's infrastructure connects merchants and consumers directly through banking systems, enabling instant account-to-account payments without routing through traditional card networks. A consumer paying via Volt authorizes the transaction directly from their bank — money moves immediately, the merchant receives real-time settlement, and no card data is transmitted or stored. The value proposition for merchants is concrete: significantly lower fees compared to cards, immediate settlement instead of waiting days, and a conversion rate that in many markets exceeds traditional methods because the payment flow is integrated into the banking app consumers already use every day. Volt offers a single API integration covering pay-ins, payouts, and cash management, dramatically simplifying technical complexity for platforms, marketplaces, and PSPs looking to expand across multiple markets. The economic model is based on per-transaction fees, with additional services including pay-by-bank checkout, virtual accounts, refund management, and fraud and risk management tooling. The target customers are mid-to-large merchants, PSPs seeking alternatives to card networks, and B2B platforms needing efficient payment infrastructure to operate globally. European open banking is still maturing, but the direction is clear: PSD2 and evolving regulation are pushing toward more open and competitive payment systems. Volt positions itself as the reference infrastructure for this paradigm shift.