Open banking pioneer Volt launches ultrafast account ownership authentication in key European markets

Open banking pioneer Volt, a UK-based, leading fintech company powering the growth of real-time payments in UK and Europe, is launching Verify, an ultrafast bank account authentication service for online merchants and businesses.

Volt is launching Verify simultaneously in the UK and five key European markets: Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. The fintech powerhouse plans further rollout of the product across additional European markets before the end of the year. Volt has +95% coverage of consumer bank accounts in these countries.

The launch marks Volt’s expanded capability to cover AIS alongside PIS, which sees the payments gateway now covering the full spectrum of open banking services in Europe.

The newly launched product automates, strengthens and simplifies how businesses across markets and sectors verify customer bank account ownership. Merchants and businesses will be able to ensure a frictionless user experience at checkout to their customers, while strengthening their fraud prevention and regulatory compliance defences.

Verify enables them to securely access customers’ bank accounts prior to payment initiation, to confirm users’ full name, bank account number and, where available, account balance.

Previous methods of account authentication relied heavily on manual processes, legacy credit bureaus and unstructured data, leading to time-consuming, resource-intensive and error-prone processes. “Verify’s ultrafast capability eliminates the complexity of the verification process and reduces additional steps. It is a great alternative to using microtransaction / penny transaction flows (where a user is required to send 1 penny transaction), which cause delays in the verification process and user drop-off at checkout, a major source of lost revenue for merchants and companies in the digital economy. Verify enables merchants to provide a superior user experience at checkout and is a highly effective solution for businesses that require quick confirmation of identity or account number authentication”, says Aleksandra Petera, Product Owner, Verify at Volt.