Airwallex + Visa. Breaking down the barriers of international trade

The roots of a successful fintech sometimes start in unusual places. For Airwallex’s founders, it started with coffee. They had started a café in Melbourne, Australia but discovered buying supplies from China meant paying exorbitantly high exchange rates and additional fees. For any small business, it wasn’t sustainable. So, the question for Airwallex was simply: how could a global payment be as easy as a local payment? 

For Airwallex, that meant creating a digital platform that helped businesses pay their suppliers with fewer fees and greater speed.

Airwallex’s vision was always to make it possible for their customers to make global payments. But what if a customer wanted to make a payment that wasn’t a B2B bank transfer? What if the fastest way for the company to make a payment was online or by using a terminal? What then? 

That’s where Visa could help Airwallex. The Visa network has millions of acceptance points. Making payments with a Visa card online or through a terminal is a breeze. Business didn’t need to slow down because now Airwallex had a valuable addition to their FX rates: the convenience of making payments with a card that’s accepted everywhere. 

Visa's platform allows payments from any currency stored in Airwallex's multi-currency wallet meaning customers can seamlessly pay from their AUD balance in one transaction and from their USD balance in another.