Wells Fargo Strategic Capital brings growth investment in Volante Technologies to USD 45m

By Edlyn Cardoza

Volante Technologies, the global leader in cloud payments and financial messaging, recently announced it received USD 10 million in growth funding from Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, bringing the total institutional investment to date to USD 45 million. With this investment, the bank’s growth capital unit joins a number of global institutional and strategic investors who committed to the previous capital raise led by Wavecrest Growth Partners in August 2020.

2020 was a banner year for Volante with the company doubling its net new logo signings from the previous year and closing 50 sales transactions with marquee customers including multinational banks, global asset managers, stock exchanges and payment networks. These successes led to numerous award wins this year alone, including topping the IBSI Sales League Table 2021 for Wholesale Payments.

At a key inflection point, the company is now looking to further modernize the payments industry and bring the benefits of its technology to a wider range of participants, helping them evolve past their legacy limitations. As part of this mission, it will deepen collaboration with existing clients, and further increase the breadth of its ecosystem partnerships.

“While innovation has accelerated in customer-facing fintech applications, legacy core payments infrastructure has been slower to adopt new technologies due to its complex messaging standards and mission-critical environments,” said Basil Darwish, managing director for Wells Fargo Strategic Capital. “Volante solved such challenges by offering a modern cloud-native payments platform that minimizes the complexity while accelerating its customers’ payments modernization efforts. We are excited to invest in Volante and join the next phase of its development.”

Recently, Wells Fargo initiated a strategic payments modernization effort by migrating to the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard across its global payments operations, for which it selected Volante for ISO 20022 Migration and Modernization.

“We are excited to continue our partnership with Volante with this investment and we look forward to seeing how Volante will continue to innovate and advance their payment capabilities,” said Jason Christensen, head of payments and treasury technology, Wells Fargo.

Volante has always had big aspirations. The company pioneered real-time payments in the U.S. and cloud technology in financial services. It also has an extensive track record of innovation in digital transformation. In fact, Volante was offering a ‘low code’ and ‘no code’ platform long before they were industry buzzwords, an approach which it will further develop with its strategic investors, including Wells Fargo.

“We’re setting a high bar for excellence – one that improves and elevates the entire industry,” said Vijay Oddiraju, CEO, Volante Technologies. “If banks can launch payment products in months versus years, then that’s a win for everyone. Beyond digital banks and financial institutions, we also want to bring the value of our solutions directly to business and consumer brands.”

“But it’s about more than innovation and automation,” he continued. “As a global citizen, I’m also driven by the ethical imperatives of an industry that manages finances in an age of great global inequality. It’s my concern for the next generation that leads me to believe that our products need to help end users achieve a better life. As a customer and an investor, Wells Fargo will further help us on this journey.”

Vaibhav Nalwaya, Managing Partner, Wavecrest Growth Partners, said, “Volante has cemented itself as the cloud payments operating system. Tier one banks, regional banks, and credit unions can forget about their multi-year transformation journeys. With Volante, they can update their connectivity to a new payments rail or comply with a new standard delivered over the cloud in a manner similar to how consumers update apps on their phones. Wavecrest is proud to support the Volante journey alongside an ensemble cast of strategic investors.”

Recently, IBS Intelligence reported that Volante Technologies, the global leader in cloud payments and financial messaging, announced a partnership with MDSL, a specialist in the integration of turnkey banking solutions in the Middle East, to enhance and automate banking payments in Egypt.