Volante Technologies has released their latest version of Volante Designer Version 5.1 today. Learning more about the upgrade and Volante’s services and customers, Forex Magnates spoke to Fiona Hamilton, VP Europe and Asia at Volante Technologies.
Headquartered in the US, with its European base in London, Volante Technologies core services is a solution for financial and payment firms to handle messaging integration. At the heart of their solution is Volante Designer. The product is a software development kit that specializes in data messaging integration, to assist financial related firms with creating data connections for their platforms to their customers as well as external trading venues, banks, and payment gateways. Volante Designer can be viewed similarly to a USB multi-cable, which can be used to charge numerous devices with its split ends of diverse adapters. In the same way, companies use Volante to help them create connections with the various industry protocols like FIX and ISO 20022.
Fiona Hamilton, VP Europe and Asia at Volante Technologies
Describing the rationale to the current update, Fiona Hamilton stated that “we view ourselves as a very customer focused firm and we look at a lot of the emerging technologies being used to add them”. With the upgrade, Hamilton explained that they have added support to multiple payment systems including BACS and Faster Payments (FPS), as well as providing updates to messages in ISO 20022 and its derivatives and SWIFT Trade Finance MT798 templates. In addition, version 5.1 added support to the Spring framework and Mule, for Java based application development. Hamilton added that also being upgraded in Volante Designer is improved functionality for direct coding, for developers that do not want to use the graphical interface but prefer to code directly in Java.
According to Hamilton, Volante’s goal is for the Designer is to be robust enough to be viewed by firms as an “off the shelf tool kit and plug-in” to replace the need for them to work internally to code connections to new technologies and messaging protocols. She explained that one of the advantages of having a diverse customer base that includes payment companies, banks, and buy-side funds, it provides them a wide view of the market and grasp of current challenges.
As an example of how their product is used by firms to improve messaging efficiency, Hamilton cited customer onboarding. She explained that “people like to say that everyone uses industry protocols like FIX or ISO 20022, but the reality is that everyone is looking for an edge to differentiate themselves and customizing their messaging feeds”. The result is that connections are rarely the same between customers. Hamilton explained that with Volante Designer, it provides a flexible architecture for companies to graphically select which messaging features should be added and how to link and map them. In this regard, Volante has found that compared to hard coding customer integration customizations, users of Volante Designer are able to cut down the technical onboarding process.
