Source: Yapily
Volume, the one-click checkout startup, has partnered with open banking infrastructure provider Yapily to reduce the $100 billion being paid by customers annually in hidden and unnecessary fees at online checkouts.
The partnership underpins Volume’s Transparent Checkout, the UK’s first one-click solution to enable direct “account-to-account” (A2A) payments between consumers and merchants, without the need for payment processing intermediaries and expensive third-parties. Currently, merchants have to pay between 2% and 8% of every sale to these card, ewallet and BNPL facilitators — costs that are ultimately paid by consumers in higher prices.
The impact of high transaction fees on merchants — totalling $100 billion annually, according to McKinsey — recently became highly visible in a public dispute, now resolved, when Amazon threatened to stop the use of UK-issued Visa credit cards.
Building on top of Yapily’s open banking infrastructure, Volume’s new one-click online payment solution facilitates direct A2A payments between merchants’ and online shoppers’ bank accounts, cutting transaction fees by up to 75%. This makes Volume three times cheaper than credit and debit cards, and up to ten times cheaper than ewallets. In one click, shoppers are relayed to their banking app’s biometric check, and the money is instantly settled with the merchant.
By partnering with Yapily, Volume aims to eliminate fees based on a percentage of the total basket and drive online transaction costs close to zero. Volume’s breakthrough to a low, flat-rate cost model is the result of new Open Banking regulations that came into full effect in the UK in March 2022. Yapily’s open banking infrastructure powers Volume Transparent Checkout to work with any banking app in the UK and Europe.
Simone Martinelli, co-founder and CEO at Volume, says, “We want to do for ecommerce payments what Transferwise and WorldRemit did for currency exchange. Today’s online shopping experience is broken for merchants and their customers. Only last week Mastercard and VISA announced they are raising fees for merchants. By partnering with Yapily, Volume is slashing the cost of doing business online and creating a transparent, inclusive and financially sustainable way of enabling payments that works for everyone.”
Stefano Vaccino, CEO and Founder at Yapily, comments, “Volume is solving payment pain points for merchants in the UK and across Europe. We’re delighted to support this community and help Volume to deliver the benefits of open banking to businesses as they continue to grow.”