It simply cannot be overstated how much technology has transformed – and continues to transform – our way of life. Innovations springing from the Computer Age are creating opportunities worldwide for businesses and, through bringing greater efficiency and productivity, allowing them to look for ways to operate at previously daunting global scales.
However, with growth comes disruption and complications, not least in how the finances underpinning the business are concerned, where managing and moving money globally becomes incredibly complex.
Businesses face numerous challenges when it comes to money movement – pay-in, pay-out, FX, and embedding financial solutions – not to mention adhering to each region’s regulatory and compliance requirements. For years, fintechs have been working tirelessly to solve these challenges and partner with businesses to help them achieve their growth ambitions.
Back in 2015, two of Airwallex’s co-founders Jack Zhang and Max Li, experienced first-hand the complexities of moving money. As owners of a cafe in Melbourne, Australia, Jack and Max recognised the many pain points of running a business, including the impact of high FX fees and banking costs on their profit margins. Together with our other two co-founders, Lucy Liu and Xijing Dai, they used their combined backgrounds in financial services and technology and began building a better solution for businesses operating across borders from the ground up. Today, Airwallex has grown to become a relevant part of the global financial ecosystem. By building a powerful global payment and banking infrastructure, we are providing a streamlined and more cost-efficient way for businesses to operate globally.
As the world continues to digitalise, expectations that services be delivered instantly, regardless of time or place, have become the norm. Data is passed between companies and devices within seconds, so why not money?
When it comes to making payments globally, the process is tedious, time-consuming, and costly. For generations, the ever-changing money movement landscape has caused frustration for businesses that want and need to get paid and make payments globally. The entire process requires businesses to use numerous tools and financial partners such as to facilitate faster and more efficient money movement.
With Airwallex’s proprietary payments and banking infrastructure, businesses of all sizes can accept payments, move money globally, and simplify their treasury needs, enabling an end-to-end solution that can help businesses scale across borders.
The needs of today’s modern businesses vary from geographical location to payment needs – a media company that needs to collect subscription payments from everywhere around the world, or an investment platform like Plum that needs a customised tech solution to enable cross-border stock purchases. This is where having a flexible and reliable financial infrastructure can make the world of difference for a business looking to grow beyond borders.
From global account issuance, domestic and cross-border money transfer, multi-currency wallets, and online payment acceptance, Airwallex’s suite of products and services – all in one unified platform – is what enables us to help businesses streamline their payments and financial operation needs.
Airwallex has developed a complete product stack that includes:
payment gateways that support merchants, providing them with more options to accept purchases from their customers,
wallet services (B2B to merchants and customers) that provide customers with the ability to receive and hold money in almost any currency,
an FX engine to address the pain points of hidden fees, low transparency, and slow pace,
GTPN (Global Treasury Payment Network) to introduce more into the FX engine by establishing our payment network,
issuing to provide our customers with virtual cards, physical cards, and expense/employee cards.
Embedded finance is a term many of us hear often. Integrating different types of financial services into a non-financial business' infrastructure, without the need to be redirected off the platform to a bank, eliminates many of the pain points businesses experience. It also provides flexibility, as companies can customise how these financial services are integrated and control the underlying customer experience for their customers.
With Airwallex for Platforms, high-growth startups to large enterprises can embed Scale to open revenue streams and be empowered to achieve profitability objectives. Our Scale offering is a customisable API solution which enables businesses to manage their entire transaction lifecycle and turn complex payments, treasury, issuing, and FX flows into global recurring revenue.
This service becomes a big value proposition if you’re a high-growth business looking to expand your business globally. For example, take a non-financial services company like ridesharing. They need to bring payments onto their platform in order to take payments ahead of the ride via the in-app function. The ability to save a card on your phone and simplify the transaction process for both the rider and the driver has enabled this business model to thrive. Without embedded finance, ridesharing wouldn’t have been able to get off the ground.
Another great example is a global ecommerce marketplace with an extensive customer base that transacts large payment volumes. By bringing payments on the platform with Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), the ecommerce marketplace is able to onboard merchants to process and handle payments, FX, and payouts for their merchant base across the world – making it a more seamless and inclusive experience for all parties involved.
Since day one, Airwallex has prioritised its tech stack to ensure we’re able to provide customers with a reliable, agile, and cost-effective way to move money globally. Our diverse and determined team of innovators, movers, and shakers not only work closely with our customers to build a seamless product that fits their ever-changing needs – but also works side-by-side with clearing systems to facilitate faster payouts (we are a principal issuer of Visa and Mastercard).
Our global network coverage includes more than 150 countries and over 50 currencies. Also, 93% of all Airwallex cross-border transactions go through local rails rather than SWIFT, and we have over 50 licences globally across transfer, acquiring, issuing, and stored value. Thus, if you’re looking to expand your business across borders, please get in touch to see how Airwallex can support your growth ambitions.
This editorial piece was first published in The Paypers' Cross-Border Payments and Ecommerce Report 2022–2023, which taps into the fast-growing cross-border market and provides a comprehensive overview of trends and developments that are pivotal in this space, being the ultimate source of information for ecommerce businesses interested in expanding globally.
Pranav Sood is GM, EMEA at Airwallex, where he is responsible for building out and overseeing Airwallex’s operations and teams across EMEA, including supporting its global strategy. Previously, Pranav was VP of Small Business at GoCardless, and he led a cross-functional team responsible for acquiring and growing its SME customers.
Airwallex is a next-generation technology company with one of the world’s most powerful global financial infrastructure and operating systems for modern businesses growing beyond borders. Our technology empowers businesses of all sizes, from high-growth startups to large enterprises, to operate at scale globally, through a comprehensive product suite and embedded finance solutions.
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