Volante’s Deepak Gupta drives payments innovation amid sector’s acceleration

Deepak Gupta, EVP at Volante Technologies, leads the charge in transforming global payments infrastructure with cloud-native solutions, as the sector accelerates towards real-time, AI-driven innovations and legacy system modernisation.

Deepak Gupta, Executive Vice President of Engineering, Product, and Services at Volante Technologies, plays a crucial role in steering the company’s operations from product conception to delivery and ongoing support. With a background deeply rooted in enterprise software and cloud computing, and prior leadership experiences, including a significant tenure as Chief Architect at Oracle’s SaaS business units, Gupta has been instrumental in pushing Volante’s vision of simplifying and modernising payment systems. As he articulates, the core aim has always been to design technology that genuinely addresses customer challenges, avoiding the entanglement of complexity and inefficiency—a principle that has guided his journey through various fintech leadership roles to his current impactful position at Volante.

Volante Technologies has established itself as a global leader in Payments as a Service (PaaS) since its founding in 2001. The company’s cloud-native platform is designed to empower financial institutions by simplifying their payments processing, reducing operational costs, and enhancing the customer experience. Its comprehensive solution suite includes support for ISO 20022 migration and real-time payments, which are critical demands in today’s rapidly evolving financial landscape. Additionally, Volante Payments Intelligence, a more recent innovation, offers actionable insights by integrating historical and real-time payment data, enabling banks to optimise operations and strategic planning with precision. This positioning maintains Volante’s commitment to keeping its customers at the forefront of payments modernization as the pace within the sector accelerates.

The origins of Volante trace back to a drive to address the critical inefficiencies in payments infrastructure revealed in the aftermath of the early 2000s economic turbulence. The company’s founding ethos—to “make the complex simple”—has endured through economic crises, including the global financial downturn of 2008-09, lending resilience and continuity that has allowed its clients to emerge stronger by harnessing its automated platforms. The company notably achieved milestones such as enabling a major U.S. bank to process the first real-time payment transaction and supporting another institution to become the world’s first 100% cloud transaction bank.

Financially, Volante was initially self-funded by its founders, who took significant personal risks while developing what would become a pioneering low-code, cloud-native platform. This patient approach paid off, leading to milestone revenue achievements that enabled external growth capital rounds starting in 2020, with notable investors including Sixth Street, Wavecrest Growth Partners, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, and industry giants such as BNY Mellon, Citi, Poste Italiane, and Visa Ventures. The company remains majority owned by the founders, ensuring continuity in its strategic direction.

Volante counts some of the largest global banks—such as Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo—as well as mid-sized institutions like Lakeside and Southstate, among its customers. These financial institutions turn to Volante to break free from legacy systems and embrace modern payments infrastructure through a flexible SaaS model that eliminates upfront costs, allowing clients to scale according to their specific needs. This model aligns with Gupta’s philosophy of introducing a “think like a startup” culture that prioritises curiosity and fearless execution to sustain innovation and competitive edge.

Gupta highlights the critical issue of inertia within the banking sector regarding legacy system modernisation. He suggests that while risk and compliance remain paramount, financial institutions must embrace technological agility to avoid being overtaken by fintech disruptors. He references the significant shift in unsecured consumer lending from 5% fintech origination in 2014 to 26.5% in 2023 as a cautionary tale illustrating the consequences of delayed innovation—a trend he warns could replicate itself in payments.

In addition to steering Volante, Deepak Gupta was recently appointed to the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC) 2023-2024 Board Advisory Group. This role reinforces his influence on the national stage, where he collaborates with industry leaders to advance secure and efficient faster payments across the U.S., shaping the future of payment systems in alignment with Volante’s strategic focus.

Volante’s prominence in fintech was underscored when CB Insights included the company in its Fintech 250 list of the world’s most promising private fintech companies in December 2022. This recognition reflects Volante’s innovative cloud payments and financial messaging solutions, which now serve over 125 financial institutions across 35 countries. The company’s platform processes millions of transactions daily, enabling clients to stay competitive by rapidly adapting to emerging market trends.

Looking ahead, Gupta envisions the continued erosion of boundaries between business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) payments, driven by the demand for seamless, real-time settlement experiences across all transaction types. He predicts that AI will serve as a key accelerator in transforming customer onboarding, risk management, and payment processes. For banks and financial institutions, this transition will require incremental yet comprehensive modernization strategies that replace legacy infrastructures with microservices-based ecosystems, balancing innovation with prudent risk and cost management amid ongoing economic uncertainties.

Gupta also draws attention to transformative fintech applications such as India’s PhonePe, which processes a substantial volume of the country’s GDP annually, exemplifying the market-changing potential of fintech beyond mere convenience. He highlights innovative real-time payment solutions like Bank of New York’s Integrated Payables Service, Standard Bank’s PayShap, and South State Bank’s adoption of RTP and FedNow, which are reshaping payment experiences for both businesses and consumers.

His message to larger players in the financial services sector is straightforward: combine big-picture vision with rapid execution, embrace emerging technologies such as AI responsibly, and cultivate a culture of adaptability while maintaining rigorous compliance. Those institutions that listen closely to their customers’ needs and stay agile in the evolving payments landscape will lead, while others risk disruption.

Deepak Gupta’s insight and leadership at Volante Technologies position the company as a key enabler of innovation and modernization in the global payments industry, continuing a legacy that began over two decades ago with a simple yet powerful mission: to make the complex simple.

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Source: Noah Wire Services