Slowood achieved 36% increase in returning customers with local payment methods
How Airwallex enables fast and easy payment gateway integration for eCommerce businesses to improve checkout experience and boost sales.
36%
increase in returning customers
50%
increase in shoppers using local payment methods
Up to 90%
saved in FX and transaction fees on Shopify bills
Slowood offers eco alternatives for daily essentials, sourcing healthy and eco-conscious products from all over the world.
Industry
Retail and eCommerce
Location
Hong Kong
Rebekah
Business Development Director of Slowood
"With Airwallex, we were able to start accepting local payments quickly. Because the user experience is intuitive and the checkout process faster, we’ve actually had a 50% increase in shoppers using local payment methods."
Slowood was founded by local couple Kai and Dora with a simple mission – to make zero-waste and sustainable living more accessible.
They source healthy and eco-conscious products from top suppliers around the world. This means that they need to transact in different currencies on a regular basis. The conversion and international transaction costs were quickly eating into their profit margins.
When they launched their online store using Shopify in 2019, they quickly realised that the basic international payment options provided by Shopify were not enough for the local market. They needed a quick and seamless solution to accept online payments through local payment methods.
Challenge 1: Shopify only provides basic international payment options which is not ideal for local customers
Shopify Payments, the default payment gateway of Shopify, supports only international payment methods such as PayPal and credit cards. However, with Slowood’s target customers being locals living in Hong Kong, the absence of local payment options was impacting the purchase success rates and checkout experience.
Solutions & Results: Airwallex Payments offers local payment methods with fast and easy integration
Airwallex Payments supports 160+ local payment methods including FPS, Alipay, Alipay HK, and WeChat Pay, and can be easily integrated into Shopify.
After 90 days of plugging Airwallex Payments into their Shopify eCommerce site, Slowood experienced a 36% increase in returning customers, as well as a 50% increase in the number of shoppers using local payment methods.
Challenge 2: Hefty conversion and transaction costs when paying international suppliers
Dealing with various suppliers across the globe, Slowood often needs to make international payments in different currencies, including Shopify bills.
However, Shopify only accepts payments in USD, forcing Slowood to bear the burden of FX conversion costs and foreign merchant fees. With Shopify charging a service subscription fee and a percentage per transaction, the monthly bill from Shopify can quickly eat into Slowood’s profit margin.
Solutions & Results: Use Airwallex Borderless Cards to avoid unnecessary fees
With Airwallex Borderless Card, Slowood can easily settle Shopify bills using their account balance in USD from their multi-currency accounts. This means that they can bypass forced conversion, and eliminate unnecessary and hidden charges associated with foreign transactions.
Challenge 3: Corporate clients require a different set of payment methods
In addition to traditional retail customers, Slowood was expanding its business to corporate gifting and office snacking. Unlike retail customers, corporate clients had specific and often rigid preferences regarding payment methods. Slowood needed to adapt a payment solution to secure corporate partnerships and sales by offering greater flexibility in payment methods.
Solutions & Results: Leverage Payment Links to enable dozens of payment methods
By leveraging Airwallex Payment Links, Slowood can simply share the customized Payment Links with corporate clients, enabling them to conveniently pay using their preferred methods, such as credit cards, instead of through traditional invoices.
Not only does Slowood streamline the payment process for corporate clients, but they can also offer tailored deals without disrupting their existing retail operations.
Rebekah
Business Development Director of Slowood
“Airwallex can help us scale at speed, allowing greater efficiency, flexibility and a seamless experience to both our B2B and B2C customers.”
View full interview below to learn more how Airwallex enables eCommerce brands to grow their online sales and streamline financial operations.
See how our customers are finding Airwallex
"Airwallex has been a game changer for all our banking needs. As a fast-growing startup, we need a scalable yet cost-efficient batch payment solution to pay our employees and vendors both inside and outside Hong Kong. Airwallex helps us save money on every bank transfer with their near-zero transaction fee and market-beating FX rates. We also use Airwallex’s multi-currency Visa cards for business travel expenses and SaaS subscriptions to avoid hidden bank fees that would otherwise have been difficult to spot. Would highly recommend other startups to get started with Airwallex!"
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Founder, SleekFlow
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"Airwallex is an innovative fintech platform with a first-class customer support team. They transformed the previously painful process of creating corporate cards and managing business accounts into something simple, convenient, and cost-effective. The onboarding was quick and smooth, the security features exceeded our expectations, and most importantly, it is really easy to use. Airwallex saves a lot of my team's time and the simplicity is genius."
Gavin Black
Interim CEO & Chief Financial Officer, PURE Group
"I’m so thankful that Airwallex exists! In Hong Kong, it's so hard to find financial service providers that are friendly to small businesses. Airwallex allows me to exchange currencies at really great rates, and the interface is very modern and easy to use compared to my bank. We save so much money with Airwallex! In just a few months, we've already saved more than HK$78,000 in unnecessary fees!"
Jennifer Chong
CEO, Linjer
"Airwallex provides us with flexibility and cost savings on our international fund flows. We are using Airwallex to pay international suppliers and are saving up to 90% on transaction fees and FX verses traditional banks - thanks to their competitive exchange rate and low transaction costs."
Kelvin Kan
Founder, Homemakase
"Airwallex's global payment solutions help us to save costs on international transaction fees & FX, fostering our mission to increase access to healthy period care that's better for our bodies and the planet."
Becks Bradley
Marketing and Development Director, LUÜNA naturals
"Airwallex has been great for our team - it makes payments and transfers so much easier, and has saved us significant amounts of time compared to what we were doing before with HSBC. Airwallex's platform is easy to use and very intuitive. Airwallex virtual card has solved most of our painpoints with sharing corporate card numbers and credit card limits. The best part is being able to save money on all our monthly bank transfers, and we've already saved thousands of dollars by using Airwallex. Airwallex's support has also been highly responsive to troubleshoot any issues in a timely manner."
Sarah Chang
Co-founder & COO, Forkast.News
"Airwallex offers both physical and virtual corporate cards tailored to the needs of different staff. Their virtual corporate card can even be set up in just 1 minute. Its features make expense management and approval processes notably easier for us."
Justin Chu
General Manager, K Dollar Program
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