Meet the company: Airwallex

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3 Jun 2019

For sellers who trade overseas, repatriating their funds from sales is a key part of their business. Whilst there are many services that can assist, only Airwallex was built specifically with online sellers in mind. Airwallex isn’t an ecommerce service tacked on to a business focused on their hordes of brokers, the service has been built from the ground up for ecommerce and have made the process incredibly easy and straightforward for merchants.

We spoke to James Butland, VP European Growth at Airwallex to find out more about what makes their service unique and how it can assist merchants with their business.

Who are Airwallex?

We are an international payments company specialising in low-cost and seamless cross-border payments. We currently have eight offices and 300+ employees around the world and continue to grow at a phenomenal rate.

In 2015 our founders set out to make international payments borderless and to remove hidden fees and inflated exchange rates from the market. Today we deliver on that goal and support SME and Enterprise customers all over the world to help them collect payments locally, convert currency at the interbank exchange rate and payout locally to bank accounts around the world.

What can Airwallex offer online retailers?

We currently work with a large number of online retailers to help them manage their international payments. These retailers use Airwallex to pay their international suppliers in 130+ countries, collect revenue from overseas markets by providing them with local bank details, convert that revenue back to their local currency and payout to their bank account.

For example, in the UK our customers will be able to collect funds in EUR throughout the European Economic Area with local bank details. For enterprise clients we offer a suite of APIs to automate these processes, but for most online retailers selling on marketplaces, they prefer to use the Airwallex Web App to take control of their international payments.

What makes Airwallex unique?

Airwallex is a technology driven company and not your typical bank or brokerage. We’ve built an intelligent suite of APIs and an intuitive Web App to provide customer focussed solutions to handle international payments for businesses large and small. The financial tools available to our customers mean they can act like a global business from day one and at a fraction of the cost.

International payments have long been subject to extremely high fees which are often hidden in an inflated exchange rate. Airwallex is changing this. We offer completely transparent fees and give our customers access to the interbank exchange rate.

We also don’t discriminate on company size and want to help all businesses achieve their global growth ambitions.

Why should a retailer be interested?

If you’re a retailer that operates outside your home market, Airwallex can help you:

Access the interbank exchange rate with transparent and low fees to help increase your margins
Increase the speed of your cross-border transactions and improve your cash flow
Expand to new markets to fuel your growth ambitions
Improve your international payment processes utilising the latest technology and an intuitive Web App

What are Airwallex rates like?

Airwallex fees are completely transparent and we always use the interbank exchange rate.

It’s free to sign up and to collect money in your Airwallex Global Account
There’s a small fee (0.5%-1%) when you convert currencies in your Global Account and when you pay other businesses and suppliers in a different currency.
There’s a £2.50 fee when you send a payment to a bank account via the local payment system (non-SEA countries).