• Volt Bank announced it was closing its deposit taking business on Wednesday
• The 140 staff will be left without a job once business shuts next Tuesday
• Customers of the neobank have been urged to transfer their funds by July 5  
• Neobanks operate exclusively online without in-person branches 

By ELIZA MCPHEE FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

An Australian digital bank has collapsed, leaving 140 employees without a job and 6,000 customers racing to withdraw their money before next week.

Volt Bank announced on Wednesday it was closing its deposit taking business and will return its banking licence after it couldn't raise enough funds to stay afloat.

'Volt has made the difficult decision to close its deposit taking business and has commenced the process of returning all deposits to its account holders,' the neobank's website said.

'Customers need to transfer the balances held in all Volt accounts to a nominated bank account with another financial institution before the 5th of July 2022.'

eobnak, Volt Bank, announced on Wednesday it was closing its deposit taking business and will return its banking licence after it couldn't raise enough funds to stay afloat

The bank was launched in 2017 with Volt chief executive Steve Weston saying the closure of the company was an 'incredibly sad day'.  

'We've built something as a team that Australia really needs to bring banking competition to the market. We've got technology and capability that simply doesn't exist in Australia today,' he said.

'But for us to take that to a public launch, we need petrol in the car and by petrol we need capital. And in the current market, being able to raise the amount of capital that we needed to be able to scale up was a task that we couldn't accomplish.'

Transfer limits for customers have been increased to $250,000 with members told to stop using their accounts immediately.

Volt has more than $100million in deposits. 

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