Volt Accounts, Virtual IBANs & Named Accounts: What they are and what they do

When Volt secured its UK EMI licence in 2024, and its Polish Payment Institution licence a few months earlier in 2023, it meant that we could be in the money flow. For our customers, this meant giving them full visibility of all incoming and outgoing funds.

At least it did in theory. First, we had to build a product that tracked payments from initiation to receipt – in real time. This isn’t a given with open banking, where payments are essentially automated bank transfers. As a result, they don’t deliver the data and reports that credit card processors, by contrast, have access to.

Why’s this an issue? Well, if you’re a retailer selling physical items, you need to reconcile settled payments before being able to confidently dispatch goods – a problem that becomes more pronounced the more sales a retailer makes, particularly if they’re live across multiple markets (and dependent on accepting multiple currencies).

Why Volt Accounts were needed

What was required, then, was a tool that not only provided full visibility of the payment lifecycle, but which automatically reconciled incoming payments; essentially, an end-to-end e-commerce solution. It’s why we set to work creating Volt Accounts, an account-to-account platform we now offer to merchants as a means of them taking control of all customer transactions.

Our vision for them can be broken down into three elements:

• Creating a payments platform designed for what matters: a best-in-class shopper experience and optimised conversion
• Overcoming the limitations of manual bank transfers and other account-based methods, such as lack of reconciliation and performance data
• A one-stop shop for merchants, in terms of offering not only pay-ins but refunds and eventually payouts

All Volt-powered payments are received into a merchant’s Volt Account, which is centred on an easy-to-understand, at-a-glance dashboard. From here, merchants can see the status of any given payment and take advantage of business-critical functionality – more on which in a moment.

To avoid any confusion, it’s worth highlighting that Volt Accounts are not bank accounts. In the UK, they’re e-money wallets. In the EU, they’re payment accounts that function in a similar way to e-money wallets.

Optimising reconciliations with Virtual IBANs

Automatically reconciling payments is one thing. Reconciling payments from specific users is another. If you’re a crypto or wealthtech merchant, you invariably need to reconcile high volumes of deposits to individual user wallets. Relying solely on payment references, which risks errors and typos, just isn’t practical.

The solution? Virtual IBANs (or, in Australia, PayID email aliases), which merchants can use to easily reconcile payments from end users. Incoming payments can then be identified instantly within the merchant’s Volt Account, allowing them to be matched to individual users (Virtual IBANs are linked to existing customer tracker IDs). Funds are available in real time.

We’re able to issue Virtual IBANs across the UK and Europe (and create PayID email aliases in Australia to deliver equivalent functionality), with all funds pointing to the same centralised Volt Account. Each has a localised identifier – a country-specific suffix such as DE, DK, GB etc. – which helps prevent IBAN discrimination and aids recognition.

Named Accounts: Facilitating additional use cases

There are two further use cases that we needed to – pardon the pun – account for. Merchants that integrate Volt via a Payment Service Provider (PSP) need access to cash management functionality, but are often beholden to PSP batch settlements, which limit how quickly they can initiate payouts. Issuing them with a funds-holding Named Account, which we’re now equipped to do, overcomes this problem.

A further use case for Named Accounts is marketplaces, which can use them to receive and settle pay-ins for individual stores using their platform. Named Accounts can also be issued under Volt’s licence by merchants to individual customers, enabling them to receive and settle pay-ins for individual sellers that don’t exist as business entities.

Volt Accounts functionality: What to expect

Track multi-currency payments

Volt Accounts streamline pay-ins across different currencies into consolidated payment streams. If you’re a merchant accepting large volumes of top-ups from customers in different countries, this makes it much easier to track and forecast revenue, stay on top of cashflow, and access market-specific conversion data – especially when you also take advantage of Virtual IBANs.

For clarity, it’s with highlighting that we don’t offer multi-currency accounts per se, but like-for-like processing. This means providing multiple accounts, each linked to a particular currency. 

Initiate real-time refunds

Again, because of open banking payments’ equivalence to bank transfers, there has never been a mechanism by which refunds – which of course are absolutely essential to e-commerce merchants – can be initiated. How would a merchant know their customers’ bank details? Or which order their refund request related to?

Volt Accounts overcome these problems. Because each payment is attached to an order, it’s easy to reverse a transaction should a customer need to return an item. This functionality is consistent across the UK and Europe, with payments routed on local real-time rails using the customer’s chosen currency.

Customisable withdrawals

Easily withdraw funds from your Volt Account to your normal business account. This can be done to a schedule of your choosing – end-of-day sweeps are particularly popular, for example – or at any time on demand.

Reasons to start using a Volt Account

With Volt Accounts’ functionality covered, let’s recap on their five core benefits:

1. Reduced costs: With a Volt Account, you streamline the management of multiple currencies into a single solution. It’s inherently more cost effective
2. Saved time: Volt Accounts, especially when combined with Virtual IBANs, are built with automation in mind – on a global scale. You no longer have to persist with manual cash management processes
3. Increased speed: Benefit from both real-time pay-ins into your Volt Account, and real-time payouts when initiating customer refunds
4. Full visibility: Volt Accounts offer end-to-end notifications and statuses for every stage of the payment value chain
5. Improved accuracy: Real-time reconciliations leave little room for errors. And with full visibility of the payment value chain, you always know the status of any given payment

We enabled Volt Accounts for existing Volt merchants in early 2025. With impressive takeup in the wealthtech, retail and iGaming industries – and some interesting emerging use cases that we’ll soon be talking about – they’re now available to new customers too. Complete the form below to find out more.