Latest / The Payments Shed / Ep. 42 - Live from MPE Berlin: Pay by Bank at Scale: Commercial Reality, Enterprise Adoption & What Comes Next with Volt

Transcript

Ep. 42 - Live from MPE Berlin: Pay by Bank at Scale: Commercial Reality, Enterprise Adoption & What Comes Next with Volt · The Payments Shed

• 0:04
  Welcome back to the Payment Share podcast live from MPE
• 0:08
  Berlin 2026. We are now joined by Elaine
• 0:11
  Smith, who is now SVP of Commercial at Vault, a
• 0:16
  promotion. Congratulations.
• 0:17
  Thank you. Thank you very.
• 0:19
  Much exciting new job, can you tell us about it?
• 0:22
  So previously on one of my career, I've looked up to
• 0:26
  partnerships teams predominantly.
• 0:27
  So this is the step moving into sales, partnerships go to
• 0:31
  marketing strategy. So kind of all-encompassing how
• 0:34
  we look at hunting new business, bringing everything to the table
• 0:37
  and making sure that we are being successful as a.
• 0:39
  Business so slightly wider remit now bringing in new teams as
• 0:43
  well or. Yeah, so I've been really lucky
• 0:46
  actually. The team that we've got about
• 0:47
  already fantastic. So we've had some good people,
• 0:50
  but it's allowed us to be a bit creative.
• 0:52
  Move some to count around, then yes, that's such a success for
• 0:55
  the rest of the year. And you've been managing people
• 0:57
  for quite a long time now. Can you tell us a little bit
• 0:59
  about your philosophy as a as a leader?
• 1:03
  I think philosophy is a push, but yeah, I think for me it's
• 1:07
  just fairness, trust, openness, transparency, maybe a little bit
• 1:12
  too much sometimes. I think I wear my heart on my
• 1:14
  sleeve. I'm very empathetic in all walks
• 1:16
  of life, whether that's home life, work life, managing life.
• 1:21
  But yeah, I think as long as we're all aligned, everybody
• 1:24
  knows what we need to deliver, where we stand and pull together
• 1:27
  and get there. So yeah, I.
• 1:28
  Think people want that from their leaders.
• 1:30
  Nowadays though, I feel like that kind of evolution and more
• 1:32
  standoffish managers is my time in the industry.
• 1:36
  I've seen that kind of wane slightly and I think that
• 1:38
  personable approach is there's a reason why you're SVP, right?
• 1:42
  So there you go. Yeah, I think it depends where
• 1:44
  they are in their career. Some people need a little bit
• 1:46
  more hand holding. Some people can just be left to
• 1:48
  get on with it, but know that I'm always there if they need.
• 1:51
  It so we wanted to talk a little bit about the commercial
• 1:53
  viability of real time payments during our discussion as well.
• 1:57
  Can you give me your opinion on where you feel we're at with
• 2:00
  commercial viability in the market in 2026 for RTP?
• 2:03
  Yeah. I think it depends which lens
• 2:05
  you look through. If we think of it from a
• 2:06
  merchant perspective, of course it's commercially viable to push
• 2:09
  pay by bank out. We think it's faster, it's more
• 2:13
  secure, it's cheaper for the merchant, it's everything that
• 2:15
  you need. When we look at it from our
• 2:18
  side, from the provider, it's a really competitive market at the
• 2:20
  moment. There's some providers in an
• 2:23
  industry that are using their revenue to kind of incentivize
• 2:27
  business and go to market with some of those merchants from a
• 2:30
  vault perspective, actually we're reinvesting back into our
• 2:32
  product and infrastructure. So not just looking at real time
• 2:35
  payments from a pay in perspective, but building out
• 2:37
  treasury management system, building out stable point
• 2:39
  solutions. So making sure that our whole
• 2:42
  business isn't just depends on pay by bank.
• 2:45
  And maybe where that might previously have been a bit
• 2:48
  contentious from a revenue perspective, but the whole
• 2:50
  solution that we're now offering is giving us that commercial
• 2:53
  viability within the market and. Obviously we're a very merchant
• 2:56
  focused industry event today, lots of merchants in the room.
• 3:00
  Do you feel there was like maybe a feeling in the merchant
• 3:03
  community previously it was a nice to have option and now open
• 3:06
  banking or pay by bank particularly is becoming more of
• 3:08
  a need to have. And as we've kind of gone over a
• 3:11
  few years with open banking being in market, it's now really
• 3:14
  becoming a very viable check out proposition to have.
• 3:16
  Yeah, absolutely. I think from a Vol perspective,
• 3:19
  January was the most volume that we've ever processed through the
• 3:22
  market. So we are seeing the demand
• 3:24
  uptick. We're seeing more merchants come
• 3:26
  to us. Our pipeline is growing really
• 3:29
  like healthfully. And I think when you have big
• 3:32
  enterprise merchants going live, that's also having a really good
• 3:34
  impact on the industry. And also then at that consumer
• 3:37
  level, it's a consumer seeing it on checkouts, big enterprise
• 3:40
  merchants then they're more familiar with it.
• 3:43
  That's building the trust. It's building like the
• 3:45
  reassurance. And then that once again is
• 3:46
  going to make it more impactful for merchants to see it as they
• 3:50
  need to have on their checkout as opposed to and maybe.
• 3:53
  I think there's been a few household name brands that have
• 3:56
  launched Pay by Bank in the last few months, you know the
• 3:59
  Ryanairs of the world for example.
• 4:01
  But Amazon within the last few weeks rolling out Pay by Bank as
• 4:05
  a payment method and not just that, overlaying it with ones
• 4:08
  explaining to every Amazon customer what Pay by Bank is and
• 4:12
  why it's a good option for them. That feels like a real landmark
• 4:15
  moment. Pay by bank?
• 4:16
  How was that received in the? HQ absolutely.
• 4:19
  I think like I said, it's more about that trust from a merchant
• 4:23
  perspective. I think sometimes we always use
• 4:25
  that terminology about does your mom know how to use it?
• 4:29
  Well, actually, if my mom has seen it once, seen it twice,
• 4:32
  seen it on Amazon, and then actually had an e-mail that
• 4:34
  explains what it is and how to use it as safe and secure.
• 4:37
  That's once again given that full feedback loop that you
• 4:40
  know, she's going to try that. We see a lot of curiosity clicks
• 4:43
  when people first roll out a new payment method or first roll out
• 4:47
  open banking. And then that continues to grow
• 4:49
  and then naturally the curve increases.
• 4:52
  So I'm assuming with this from Amazon, we will see that trend
• 4:56
  increase throughout the Volt platform as.
• 4:58
  Well, and you don't need to name any customers, but you can talk
• 5:00
  about January being your biggest month ever.
• 5:01
  Was that driven by some more enterprise customers coming
• 5:04
  online or is that just the automatic growth that you're
• 5:05
  seeing in the market? Yeah, a little bit of both.
• 5:07
  So we work in the market with some really large PSPS where
• 5:10
  we've got enterprise merchants that had really, really great
• 5:14
  January for us. We work across many embedded
• 5:16
  platforms. We work in the automotive
• 5:18
  industry, which was really strong for us in January.
• 5:21
  We've had some really cool use cases go live in some other
• 5:27
  platforms. I can't drop my names, but yeah,
• 5:29
  it's it's a nice time to be at Vault.
• 5:31
  We're finally seeing not just that pay by bank piece, but the
• 5:34
  whole Treasury management piece coming to fruition, which is
• 5:36
  increasing that flow of them. And how do you think finance
• 5:40
  teams see pay by bank from a reconciliation point of view?
• 5:42
  They used to card payments and I don't think that's actually fair
• 5:45
  to say because we've seen gross into interchange plus plus and
• 5:49
  sometimes the business just wants to see gross settlement
• 5:52
  still, right? And if payable banks net
• 5:53
  something, is their flexibility around gross and net settling
• 5:56
  and suddenly getting settled on a Saturday and Sunday is a new
• 5:58
  thing for money financing? They maybe don't have people in
• 6:00
  their offices. I mean, there's pros and cons,
• 6:02
  right? But but how is that generally
• 6:04
  being received by the the finance roles within
• 6:07
  organizations you're dealing with?
• 6:08
  Yeah, I think it's, it's one of the key things for us as well.
• 6:11
  It's 24/7, 365 days a year. It means that money merchants
• 6:15
  can receive their money instantly, which is how it
• 6:18
  should be. I shouldn't have to wait T + 2 T
• 6:21
  +3 to get my money for my goods. I need to be able to release
• 6:24
  them instantly, collect the money instantly.
• 6:26
  Our back office is allowing this tracking of funds.
• 6:30
  We give real time updates for merchants to see where that
• 6:33
  money is within the money flow. We know instant maybe isn't
• 6:36
  instant in all countries across Europe, so we want to give that
• 6:39
  transparency of the money flow where there's still work to do.
• 6:42
  But yeah, merchants should have full visibility and
• 6:44
  reconciliation ability across that money and we can enable
• 6:47
  that with pay by bank. And with PSPS it feels like
• 6:51
  they're starting to take pay by bank more seriously as a payment
• 6:53
  method that they should have just a standard sat on the
• 6:56
  shelf. His cards, his pay by bank is
• 6:57
  your local payment methods alongside that has that again
• 7:00
  been like in in the last 12 months, maybe 18 months,
• 7:03
  something that you've seen changed the perspective from
• 7:05
  from that PSP side with open? Banking, absolutely.
• 7:08
  So we're about to go live with a new PSP in the start of Q2 and
• 7:12
  as standard pay by bank is going to be offered to every match at
• 7:15
  the standard when they sign up to the PSP, it's something that
• 7:17
  we're working with them on. They understand that the value
• 7:20
  that that's driving. We actually did a round table
• 7:22
  today at MPE with one of our PSPS to to discuss whether cards
• 7:27
  and open banking can work together in harmony and
• 7:30
  complement each other. It's not about working against
• 7:32
  each other, but how we can live and coexist.
• 7:35
  I think it's really important. It was a It was a really
• 7:37
  interesting session. So, and most of the PSPS you
• 7:39
  work with presenting data together.
• 7:42
  So they're pulling the pay by bank data and putting it
• 7:44
  alongside because that's one of the big fragmentation issues
• 7:46
  that we have in the industry. Like you have direct debit here,
• 7:48
  you have a local payment left here, you maybe have pay back
• 7:50
  and you know, and then that we go back to that finance team
• 7:52
  point. They've got four different
• 7:54
  systems they're having to log into.
• 7:56
  Like we need to get to this point where everything drops
• 7:58
  into one location. So your PS, PS coming on board
• 8:01
  now immediately pulling that data and presenting alongside of
• 8:03
  the payment methods. It does depend.
• 8:05
  We've got a few setups with a few different PS, PS and we will
• 8:07
  settle all the funds to them and share the data with them through
• 8:11
  webhooks, so they have that full visibility of where that money
• 8:14
  is coming from. But we also issue accounts at
• 8:16
  PSP level as well. So they can bring manual credit
• 8:19
  transfers, they can bring payments in from acquirers,
• 8:22
  payments in from their RTPS, everything into that account and
• 8:25
  we can help manage that reconciliation as well.
• 8:27
  We can give accounts sub merchant level.
• 8:29
  We're starting to get quite intricate with that money
• 8:31
  movement, so we can support whatever the PSP wants that's
• 8:34
  best for them or for their sub merchants.
• 8:36
  And we had your CEO, Stefan Vollett on the show a few months
• 8:39
  ago and a lot of that conversation surrounded around
• 8:41
  stablecoin and stablecoin infrastructure.
• 8:43
  And I'm interested to know a few months since we had that
• 8:46
  conversation where you guys sit in the world of stablecoins and
• 8:49
  you've had some exciting new announcements recently.
• 8:51
  But what does the next 12 months with open banking, stable coin
• 8:54
  infrastructure look like for you guys?
• 8:56
  Yeah, I feel I'm stealing his phrase.
• 8:58
  I think we spoke about it earlier.
• 9:00
  So the vision for Bolt over the next 1224 months is going to be
• 9:03
  completely real agnostic. So whether that's through Fiat
• 9:06
  rails, whether that's through stable coin rails, however the
• 9:10
  merchant wants to be able to offer that on the checkout, we
• 9:12
  can do that. There was 840 million crypto
• 9:16
  wallets around the world in 2025 and I think there was a third of
• 9:21
  all payments worth their stable point in 2024.
• 9:24
  So and even though it's not how I would predominantly choose to
• 9:28
  pay, I'm not crypto native, people out there are and we need
• 9:31
  to be able to give them that selection at checkout.
• 9:34
  We need to make sure that as a consumer, I can see multiple
• 9:37
  options how I want to check out and make sure that's as easy as
• 9:40
  possible. So that is ideally where we want
• 9:42
  to move to. We'll have multiple checkout
• 9:44
  options and then move into that treasury management piece on the
• 9:47
  back end as well. I think we're really like
• 9:48
  scratching the surface of Stable Point still at the moment in the
• 9:51
  next couple of years are going to just a bit like with Open
• 9:53
  Bank and we're just going to see the next evolution of that
• 9:55
  kicking in. So we're at MPE here in Berlin.
• 9:57
  Beautiful day, amazing conversations happening in the
• 10:00
  room. Why is this such an important
• 10:02
  event for Vault on your annual payments calendar?
• 10:05
  It's actually my favorite event. It's overtaken another one,
• 10:08
  which is very different I say the name of, but yeah, this is
• 10:12
  my favorite event. I think it's smaller, it's more
• 10:14
  intimate. Every conversation I've had
• 10:16
  today is worthwhile. There's decision makers in the
• 10:19
  room. It's the right level of decision
• 10:21
  makers. It is a premium event, but it
• 10:23
  delivers on that and the keynotes have been absolutely
• 10:27
  outstanding today. And there's like a mainstage.
• 10:29
  So it's not like other events are like, oh, I don't know where
• 10:32
  to go. I don't know.
• 10:32
  I need to be here. I need to be here because it's
• 10:34
  over a few days and it's a little bit small.
• 10:36
  I think it really gives us the ability to get as much out of it
• 10:40
  and in the time that we're here. A lot of people have said sort
• 10:42
  of similar stuff today, and I do think you're right, like having
• 10:44
  that mainstage focal point people seem to just prefer.
• 10:48
  It it was round today. Sometimes you kind of dip your
• 10:51
  head in and there's like empty seats.
• 10:52
  It was so busy. It was really good.
• 10:54
  It was a very good session. So the final part of our show,
• 10:57
  as a regular listener, I'm sure you're aware your time is now
• 11:01
  for the show. For shame.
• 11:02
  Yeah. What are you gonna nominate?
• 11:04
  I, I put so much thought into this, I was like, do I go like
• 11:07
  open banking RTP side? Do I go like more personal?
• 11:10
  But yeah, I've decided to go BMPLS.
• 11:13
  So it's a bit more personal for me, not me personally, but like
• 11:17
  use cases, things that you hear where people are running up
• 11:20
  doubt. I listened to a podcast recently
• 11:21
  that said it's by now panic later and it really resonated
• 11:25
  with me that I don't think there's enough controls.
• 11:28
  I don't think there's enough in place.
• 11:29
  I think it's just running upset in in that like Gen.
• 11:32
  Z. What's in place it with though?
• 11:35
  Do you scale back to really legacy credit solutions where
• 11:38
  they've got terrible APIs and integration setups because
• 11:42
  people need the accessibility to lending right now in a very
• 11:44
  difficult time in, in, you know, a lot of people's financial
• 11:47
  life, right? But it's making it easier, it
• 11:49
  doesn't make it right. So we're just taking the MPL off
• 11:52
  the table completely. I think I am.
• 11:55
  Yeah, I think I am. It's an interesting one.
• 11:58
  Yeah, I might have to. Go to the panel for.
• 12:01
  Well, you know what? It's really interesting because
• 12:02
  a lot of people have never used. It but I'm but.
• 12:05
  I'm is there? Is there like a generation?
• 12:07
  Yeah, yeah, I think so. But I.
• 12:08
  Think you're absolutely right and you mentioned the situation
• 12:10
  with your knees, right. So you're seeing people being
• 12:11
  affected real time with this sort of stuff.
• 12:14
  And I completely agree a lot needs to be done around.
• 12:16
  I think they're trying to to regulate it better, but we're
• 12:19
  still a way off where it needs to be.
• 12:20
  So goes to the jury for approval.
• 12:23
  But I personally, I would say controls around BMPL can
• 12:28
  definitely go on the shelf whether I'm putting OK, whether
• 12:31
  I'm putting it on the shelf. Completely.
• 12:32
  I'll compromise. OK, brilliant.
• 12:34
  Well, enjoy the rest of the event.
• 12:35
  Thank you. And yeah, thanks for coming on
• 12:37
  the. Show thanks.