Volt to develop BaaS digital platform

Volt has announced that it will develop Volt 2.0, a digital platform that allows its approved business partners to natively provide full-service banking payments to their own clients. 

Volt 2.0 will allow white-label banking where retailers can offer financial services to customers directly or via their existing loyalty programs.

It will reportedly act as an extension of pre-existing Volt partnerships with other brands.

Volt said Volt 2.0 will be able to be leveraged by incumbent banks as a platform to help them fast-track the utilisation of future banking services for their customers, and “overcome the limitations of legacy banking systems”.

The neobank said it will work with Microsoft and LAB3 engineers (both in Australia and overseas) to develop a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform with data storage and analytics capability based on cloud computing service Microsoft Azure. 

Commenting on the development of the BaaS platform, Volt CEO and founder Steve Weston said: “Volt 2.0 will need to have the capability to adapt to the changing market and the evolving needs of our customers and partners, as well as the evolving technologies available in the market.

“Operating in such a highly regulated industry and with the goal of becoming a sector leader means we need to partner with the best technology companies globally. From the perspective of scaling our platform, Microsoft ticks all the boxes.”

Microsoft Australia managing director Steven Worrall added that Microsoft Azure can support machine learning and real-time notifications to perform instant card transactions.

“Volt 2.0 has the potential to radically reshape financial services in Australia and globally,” Mr Worrall said.

“Microsoft Azure has been designed with resilience, scalability, security and trust front and centre, making it the natural platform for this sort of mission-critical and transformative application.”

Volt 2.0 will share the same Azure digital foundation as Volt’s existing retail banking system, which uses the Temenos T24 banking solution hosted in Azure.

LAB3 CEO Chris Cook said: “Our automated modular assets and advanced DevOp’s capabilities will enable Volt 2.0 to be delivered at speed in a secure and scalable manner.”

Volt remains in beta status with its waitlist clients, with a public launch pending in the coming months.

The partnership with Microsoft Azure would allow Volt to expand internationally in the future, the neobank has suggested.

[Related: Volt Bank adopts IBM fraud protection solution]

Malavika Santhebennur is the features editor on the mortgages titles at Momentum Media.

Before joining the team in 2019, Malavika held roles with Money Management and Benchmark Media. She has been writing about financial services for the past six years.