Volt has obtained an Australian Financial Services Licence from ASIC, covering A2A payment services in Australia.
The licence authorises the company to provide A2A payment services, including pay-ins and pay-outs on the New Payments Platform (NPP), to both retail and wholesale clients in Australia.
With this authorisation, Volt now holds licences in its own name across its three core markets. In the UK, the company operates as an Electronic Money Institution, while in the European Economic Area (EEA) it holds a Polish National Payment Institution licence. The Australian licence completes this framework, allowing Volt to serve global merchants and payment service providers (PSPs) through a single A2A platform under its own regulatory authority in each jurisdiction.
Capabilities on the New Payments Platform
In Australia, Volt's offering covers the full real-time payments lifecycle on the NPP. This includes PayTo collections, supporting one-off, one-click, and recurring payments, as well as PayID aliasing for automated reconciliation. In addition, the platform also supports instant pay-outs to BSB/account numbers or PayID, along with Confirmation of Payee checks.
These services are accessed through the same API that merchants use for Volt's UK and EU markets. Businesses operating across the three regions can therefore integrate once for pay-ins and pay-outs rather than maintaining separate connections for each market. Volt's Australian merchants and partners include Primer, Optty, Pepperstone, BetMakers, and City Beach.
Pay-outs extend the A2A use case
The licence is particularly relevant to the pay-out side of Volt's Australian business. According to the company, PayTo and PayID have already given Australian merchants a real-time alternative to card rails for collections. Direct authorisation now allows Volt to extend this to disbursements on the same NPP infrastructure, covering instant refunds, claims disbursements, marketplace payments, and gig-economy payouts.
The change was described as a product expansion for the merchants Volt works with, while Australia was characterised as a strategic market in which the company is investing for the long term, rather than a satellite operation.
Positioning in the A2A market
Volt presents Australia's real-time payments infrastructure as an example of how A2A payments can reach feature parity with cards, with benefits in both convenience and cost structures for merchants and consumers. In the company's view, the combination of collections, pay-outs, aliasing, and payee verification on a single domestic rail allows A2A to address use cases that have traditionally relied on card networks.
For merchants and PSPs operating internationally, the main implication of the licence is operational. A2A pay-ins and pay-outs across Europe, the UK, and Australia can now be handled by one provider holding direct authorisation in each of these markets, accessed through a single integration.
