February release notes: enhanced SWIFT and ACH payments and expanded local transfer capabilities

This month, we’re introducing key updates to improve your financial processes, enhance control, and streamline operations. From real-time card tracking and expanded local transfer capabilities to more cost-effective ACH and SWIFT options, these features empower you to optimize workflows, reduce costs, and boost success.

Business Accounts

Improve flexibility and efficiency with expanded local transfer capabilities 🌏

Several key improvements have been made to our local transfer capabilities in Hong Kong, Singapore, Mexico, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, enhancing both the flexibility and efficiency of cross-border payments.

Hong Kong: You can now make instant FPS bank transfers in HKD/CNY to Proxy IDs like phone numbers, emails, FPS identifiers, and even Hong Kong Identity Card (HKID) numbers, making local transfers easier and more accessible than ever before.

Singapore: Instant FAST bank transfers in SGD can now be sent to PayNow IDs, including phone numbers, virtual payment addresses, and personal or business IDs, reducing friction and increasing transfer flexibility.

Mexico: We’ve improved local MXN bank transfers, offering faster, cost-efficient transfers with reduced fees, no cutoff times, and instant settlement.

Vietnam: We've enabled real-time bank account verification and now support up to 140-character transfer references for more reliable, accurate payments.

Bangladesh: B2C payments are now supported for BDT transfers, enabling higher transaction limits and expanded use cases for businesses.

Pakistan: PKR bank transfers now support higher transaction limits and more use cases, including freelancing payments, with faster transfers and no cutoff times.

These upgrades significantly improve efficiency, reduce costs, and expand the use cases for local transfers across key regions.

Experience faster, cost-effective transfers with expanded US and South Africa coverage 🇺🇲🇿🇦

We’ve made significant enhancements to our local transfer capabilities in the United States and South Africa, providing even more flexibility and speed for our customers.

United States: You can now make instant bank transfers in USD via FedNow, with a transaction limit of 500,000 USD and instant flight times. This marks a major improvement over previous non-instant transfer methods like ACH, Fedwire, and paper checks.

South Africa: You can now make local bank transfers in ZAR with no transaction limit, providing a faster, more cost-effective solution compared to the previous SWIFT method. Transfers are processed with a T+1 business day flight time.

These updates improve both speed and efficiency, allowing for faster, seamless payouts in key regions.

Gain more control over direct debit with new Netherlands EUR Global Accounts 🇳🇱

We’re excited to announce the general release of Netherlands EUR Global Accounts, empowering you to seamlessly handle direct debit payouts within SEPA regions.

All customers can now create Netherlands EUR Global Accounts with the following capabilities:

• Collect EUR locally via SEPA, SEPA Instant, and TARGET2

• Settlement time: 0–2 days (SEPA), 0–1 day (SEPA Instant & TARGET2)

• Transaction limit: None (SEPA & TARGET2), 100K EUR per transaction (SEPA Instant)

• Payout EUR via SEPA Core Direct Debit with no maximum limit

These improvements enable businesses to authorize third-party billers to debit EUR funds directly from their Airwallex Wallet, streamlining payouts and expanding payment flexibility across Europe. You can also receive EUR funds directly into your Airwallex Wallet from marketplaces.

For more information, please refer to our product documentation and support articles.

Spend

Global Entity Management now supports Xero 🌐

We're excited to announce the availability of Global Entity Management for all Xero customers, expanding on our previous support for NetSuite. With Global Entity Management, customers using Xero can centrally manage their financial operations across multiple entities. Key benefits include:

• Control and manage global spend: Create and maintain a global set of approval policies rather than redundant policies for each account. Review and approve all expenses, reimbursements, and bills in one place.

• Single source of truth for financial information: View aggregated financial information in one place across all of their entities and accounts, including account balances, payments, and reports.

• Simplified user management: Centrally manage and invite users across all entities and accounts.

• Central integration management: View and manage all external integrations in a single place.

Stay tuned for additional updates, including support for QuickBooks customers. To activate Global Entity Management, contact your customer support representative or account manager.

Platform API and Embedded Finance

Reduct costs and gain flexibility with enhanced SWIFT and ACH payment features 💲

Key enhancement to our Payouts APIs improve flexibility and reduce costs for both international and domestic transfers.

You can now specify an intermediary bank SWIFT code when creating SWIFT transfers via API. This is especially helpful when recipients require routing through a specific intermediary bank, providing more control and customization in your transactions.

Additionally, we’ve introduced Next Day ACH for USD local transfers, offering a 30% lower cost than Same Day ACH.

For more details, visit our product documentation on how to create a new beneficiary and how to create transfer API reference.