Nikita Boyarkin
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RAT v2 · project 19 of 23

The 0.55% gate is reachable only at SOM scale (~€332M/mo, 122× today) — a cold-start, not 'impossible'. Best quote is Interbank Prime at 0.745%.

Situation
The preceding project set the break-even FX cost at 0.55% but assumed such a price is buyable
Task
Test that assumption by modelling what liquidity providers actually quote
Action
Provider quotes log-linear in volume, the volume required for the gate via log-interpolation, provider ranking and hedge term
Result
The 0.55% gate needs ≈ €332M/month at SOM scale; today's ~€2.7M/mo is ~122× lower; ~0.20pp per order of magnitude; Interbank Prime 0.745%
Stack
Pythonpandas / NumPySciPy / Statsmodelsscikit-learnMatplotlib / Seabornuv + ruff
Source View on GitHub →
On this page
  1. Situation
  2. Task
  3. Actions
  4. Result
  5. Recommendations
  6. Documentation

Volta — FX Sourcing Feasibility

Situation

Project 14 established the break-even FX cost (0.55%) but assumed such a price is buyable. This project models liquidity-provider quotes.

Task

The preceding project set the break-even FX cost but only assumed it was buyable, so my job was to model what liquidity providers actually quote.

Actions

  • Provider quotes: interbank log-linear in volume, hedge cost falls with term.
  • Required volume for the gate (log-interpolation).
  • Provider ranking (quote vs hedge), hedge-term effect.

Result

  • The 0.55% gate is reachable at ≈ €332M/month — SOM scale (180K travelers).
  • Today’s volume (~€2.7M/mo) is ~122× lower; SOM clears the gate with 1.5× headroom.
  • ~0.20pp per order of magnitude; Interbank Prime 0.745% is the best provider.

Recommendations

  • Risk v2 #2 is a cold-start: bridge to volume (partner-volume aggregation, paid travel tier, long hedge).
  • Pick the best provider + a long hedge (the second discount after volume).
  • Hold travel scaling until volume is reached.

Documentation

Charts

Source: github.com/NikitaBoyarkin/volta-banking — 22 projects; figures recomputed from the repo's own datasets (data/*.csv) via its analysis scripts. Funnel counts from data/volta_funnel_data.csv (10,000 users); A/B, retention, segmentation, churn, RFM, CLV, attribution, anomalies, spend, support, NPS, JTBD, unit economics, premium, KYC deep-dive, referral, assisted CAC, FX sourcing, premium offers, anchor CAC and dormant win-back follow the published project narrative (README + part pages).

FX cost vs monthly volume

Best achievable FX price (interbank + hedge) as a function of monthly volume. The 0.55% gate from Project 14. The curve is log-linear: each order of magnitude yields ~0.20 pp.

0 0.5 1 1.5 Best effective cost 1M — Best effective cost: 1.11 2.5M — Best effective cost: 1.05 5M — Best effective cost: 0.97 10M — Best effective cost: 0.91 25M — Best effective cost: 0.81 50M — Best effective cost: 0.75 100M — Best effective cost: 0.68 250M — Best effective cost: 0.58 500M — Best effective cost: 0.5 1M 2.5M 5M 10M 25M 50M 100M 250M 500M Monthly volume, € Effective FX cost, %
Key takeaways
  • The 0.55% gate is reachable at ≈ €332M/month — SOM scale (180K travelers).
  • Today's volume (~€2.7M/month) is ~122× lower — risk v2 #2 is a cold-start, not 'impossible'.

FX provider ranking

Effective cost (interbank + hedge) across six liquidity providers at €50M volume. The ~0.1–0.3 pp spread is comparable to the volume discount.

0 0.5 1 1.5 Interbank Prime — Quoted: 0.69 0.69 Fintech Liquidity — Quoted: 0.76 0.76 Prime Broker A — Quoted: 0.79 0.79 Global FX Desk — Quoted: 0.81 0.81 Regional Bank — Quoted: 0.92 0.92 Aggregator X — Quoted: 1.01 1.01 Interbank Prime — Hedging: 0.05 0.05 Fintech Liquidity — Hedging: 0.05 0.05 Prime Broker A — Hedging: 0.05 0.05 Global FX Desk — Hedging: 0.05 0.05 Regional Bank — Hedging: 0.05 0.05 Aggregator X — Hedging: 0.05 0.05 Interbank Prime Fintech Liquidity Prime Broker A Global FX Desk Regional Bank Aggregator X Provider Effective cost, % Quoted Hedging
Key takeaways
  • Interbank Prime is cheapest: effective cost 0.745% vs 1.059% at Aggregator X — a 0.31 pp gap.
  • Hedging is a material part of the price (0.048–0.052 pp); the optimum is the best provider plus a long hedge.

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