A look back at 2023: Volt’s most memorable moments

The past 12 months have been monumental for us as a company. Volt began as a seven-person operation back in 2019, borne out of a dream to start a real-time payments revolution.  

It’s fair to say that we’re now unrecognisable from those early days – and we’re only getting bigger. As we begin the adventure of 2024, we’re taking a look back at our best moments of 2023.

Series B funding secured

In June 2023 we secured our $60m Series B funding; a huge feat following our record-breaking Series A funding in June 2021. IVP, a Silicon Valley-based firm with a 40+ year track record backing companies like Coinbase and Slack, led the investment round, with new investor CommerzVentures participating alongside EQT Ventures, Augmentum Fintech PLC and Fuel Ventures.

“We decided to partner with Volt because we were inspired by Tom, Jordan, and Steffen’s mission to create a secure global payments network,” Angela Zhu, Partner at IVP, said. “After thorough due diligence, we discovered that Volt is the only A2A provider capable of delivering real-time, pan-European coverage, which is why companies like Worldpay, Shopify, and Kiwi.com chose to work with them.”

Expanding our reach and headcount

Our global footprint got bigger last year as we expanded into Australia with ticketing platform Megatix, whose innovation-first mindset matches Volt’s determination to disrupt the payments landscape. Thanks to our integration with digital payment platform PayTo, utilising Australia’s real-time payments infrastructure the New Payments Platform (NPP), consumers can pay directly from their account via ‘Instant Bank Transfer’.

Over AUS $1.5trn worth of payments were processed via the NPP in the 12 months prior September 2023, with our VP Expansion – Matthew Jones – explaining: “The combination of real-time rails, a slick authorisation flow via bank app, and strong interest within the ecosystem for this innovation made Australia an obvious candidate as we assessed which markets to expand into following our success in Brazil.”

But we wouldn’t have been able to achieve these launches without the right people, and the number of Voltologists continues to grow. In fact, last year alone we welcomed over 100 new joiners to the company – almost doubling our size since our global headcount in December 2022.

Welcoming new customers and partners 

Our customer base grew too. 2023 saw 117 new merchants based across 21 countries launch with Volt, including online travel agent Kiwi.com and our first merchant Down Under – Megatix. 

“We take immense pride in onboarding every single one of our new merchants, fostering a seamless experience from the initial engagement to the successful processing of their first transaction,” our SVP Sales, Europe – Adam Cavanagh – explained. “This deep-rooted passion resonates across the entire organisation; we recognise that our direct relationship with merchants extends to their impact on millions of users worldwide.”

Plus our network widened as 20 new partners across 10 countries joined us to help spread the word of Volt. How will these new partnerships help us continue to grow, and what does this number mean for our network?

“In 2023, the partnership team achieved significant milestones by securing partnerships with leading payments service providers such as Worldpay and building a strategy with Worldline,” noted Richard Drury, our VP Partnerships. “Additionally, we successfully collaborated with innovative technology service providers like Primer and Bridge, which will play a crucial role in achieving our goals in 2024. These partnerships have positioned us strongly in the market and set the stage for a successful year ahead.”

Volt Vision Summit

What better way to celebrate a successful year and reward our hard work than a company-wide get together? In November the entire company flew to Ibiza for our inaugural Volt Vision Summit 2023. As well as team bonding and wellbeing activities we held a conference day, during which speakers discussed everything from organisational goals to company culture.

We even had our very own Dragons’ Den, with groups pitching either a priority or idea for our 2024 strategy. One of these was a Volt exchange programme, in which employees would temporarily ‘join’ other departments to gain new knowledge and a better understanding of what they do. Another was a company-wide hackathon initiative, bringing people together to execute ideas on how to strengthen the company as a whole.

“Working on the summit was an amazing opportunity to bring the team together and look back at our achievements as well as look forward to the future,” Heloise Keene, our Events and Marketing Lead, explained. 

“When planning the event, one of the main elements we wanted to achieve was a feeling of unity which is so important to our company culture, especially as we have colleagues based all around the world. We were able to bring that to life through a number of activities, seminars and social opportunities.”

We’ll close with some comments from our Founder and CEO, Tom Greenwood. “I’m immensely proud of what we achieved as a business in 2023,” he said. “Our progress demonstrates that we’re driving the shift to an era where real time is the only time. This wouldn’t be possible without our team of exceptional Voltologists, who I’m proud to lead. I often say ‘We’re only just getting started’, and it’s true. I’m looking forward to achieving even greater things in 2024 and beyond.”