What is Airwallex?
Airwallex’s main product is the multi-currency Airwallex Business Account, which allows your business to hold money from more than 20 currencies in a virtual wallet, collect money in more than 180 countries and send payments to more than 150 countries.
How much does Airwallex cost?
Airwallex offers some services at no cost. These free services include:
- opening foreign and domestic currency accounts
- use of a multi-currency wallet
- global money transfers using local transfer methods
- sending direct debit funds out of your Global Accounts
- multi-currency virtual cards with no international transaction fees
- first five employee cardholders added to your account for physical and virtual cards (compatible with Apple Pay and Google Pay) integrated with Airwallex Expenses
- expense management with receipt capture and approvals tools integrated with your accounting software
- Bill Pay to upload, approve, pay, and reconcile your domestic and international bills within your Airwallex account
- connect Airwallex to certain softwares including Xero and Quickbooks and others
Airwallex makes money by charging a monthly subscription, transaction costs and marking up FX payments. Fees charged vary depending on the country where you open the account. What follows is for UK Airwallex account holders.
Payment acceptance fees: These apply to the Airwallex Business Account and are the costs businesses incur to process customer payments. These range from 1.30% + £0.20 for UK cards to 3.15% +£ 0.20 for international cards. A full breakdown can be found here.
Foreign exchange conversions: Airwallex charges 0.5% above interbank exchange rates for USD, HKD, CNY, AUD, EUR, GBP, CAD, SGD, CHF, NZD, JPY, and 1% above interbank exchange rates for all other currencies.
Making money transfers using SWIFT methods costs £10 – £20.
Is Airwallex safe (regulated)?
Airwallex is not a bank. But it is licensed as an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) by the UK regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Dutch National Bank in the Netherlands. Your funds are always safeguarded in line with the local regulations where Airwallex operates.
Is Airwallex a good business bank account?
Yes, Airwallex is a good business bank account if your company is doing a lot of business with customers and suppliers in different countries.
Besides competitive rates on currency conversions, Airwallex’s key difference to many of its competitors is that businesses can collect online payments from domestic and international customers in their local currency, hold funds in their Airwallex account, and use those funds to pay out to international suppliers using Airwallex borderless cards and high-speed transfers – all whilst avoiding costly currency conversions.
Revolut and Wise do also offer multi-currency accounts, but the big traditional business banks – HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds or Natwest – don’t. Starling only has two foreign currency accounts available (USD & EUR). Revolut and Starling, along with the old established banks (except Natwest) also charge fees just to have a business banking account, whereas Airwallex, along with Wise, do not charge account fees.
Another crucial difference is that Starling, Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC, Natwest do not offer payment gateway or payment link capability – Airwallex does, making it easier for businesses to receive money by accepting online payments without the need for a physical card terminal or website.