SOULMATTE scales faster with expedited account opening process
How Airwallex’s responsive global business account services help the fast-growing fashion accessories eCommerce business.
90%
saved in foreign transaction fees
25%
time saved on business operations in the first years
<48 hours
needed to successfully open an Airwallex global account
SOULMATTE is a vegan leather handbag brand that offers sustainable, high-quality products.
Company size
10 - 50 employees
Location
Hong Kong
Industry
Retail
SOULMATTE is a Hong Kong vegan leather handbag brand. The forward-thinking label embraces eco-friendly, sustainable materials, such as cactus leather, in their products to replace animal and PVC leather.
As a rapidly growing eCommerce business, SOULMATTE needs to remain quick and agile across all their operations. From opening a company account; to expense management; and payment collection and reconciliation, the brand prioritises efficient solutions that helps them save time and streamline their workflow, especially given their limited resources.
Ellis
Founder of SOULMATTE
“We hope to expand overseas and sometimes we receive payments from abroad. Therefore, Airwallex’s global business account and its fast payment service provide great convenience for us.”
Challenge 1: SOULMATTE needs to open a company account quickly
Most traditional banks take 2-3 months for business account opening. As an eCommerce business, time is of the essence. When Ellis first started SOULMATTE, she needed to set up a company account right away so she could start making business transactions and get their operations up and running. With no time to spare, Ellis looked for alternatives to traditional banking and came across Airwallex.
Solutions & Results: Airwallex helps open a global account in less than 48 hours
Providing a near-instant global account opening service, Airwallex verified SOULMATTE’s account in less than 48 hours. This helped the company save 25% of time needed for admin work and improved their overall efficiency in their first year of operations.
SOULMATTE is able to swiftly leverage their global business account to optimise their operations. They can also access Airwallex’s market-leading FX rate to save costs when paying overseas designers and factories.
Sylvester
Operations Director of SOULMATTE
“From contacting Airwallex to successfully opening our account, the whole process took around 48 hours.”
Challenge 2: SOULMATTE wants to collect and reconcile customer payments more efficiently
Traditionally, eCommerce businesses like SOULMATTE would need to first open a business account then set up a payment plug-in, such as WooCommerce, on their online shop to be able to accept customer payments. This is a rather tedious process as the company needs to connect their WooCommerce site with a separate bank account, and also adds more work for the reconciliation process.
Solutions & Results: Airwallex offers a one-stop digital platform to keep track of company finances
Airwallex offers a convenient WooCommerce integration, which enables customer payments to go straight from SOULMATTE’s eCommerce site to their global business account, via the Online Payments function. This simplifies the company’s digital payment collection and reconciliation process and helps them keep track of their finances in a glance.
Challenge 3: Traditional banks charge expensive currency exchange rates and transaction fees for global transactions
SOULMATTE sources their raw materials from overseas and works closely with different factories based around the world. This means they have to make regular foreign transactions to pay their international suppliers.
Solutions & Results: Saving 90% transaction fees and up to 3% in currency exchange with Airwallex
Airwallex offers competitive exchange rates that are similar to the market rate, providing a more cost-effective payment solution. Compared to traditional banks, Airwallex is able to help SOULMATTE save 90% transaction fees and up to 3% in currency exchange.
Challenge 4: Time-consuming expense management process
SOULMATTE has various ongoing SaaS subscriptions and ads spend. Without a company card, it is extremely difficult for them to manage these company expenses efficiently.
Solutions & Results: Easily settle foreign digital subscriptions, with $0 handling fees from Airwallex Borderless Cards
SOULMATTE is able to create free company cards instantly with Airwallex. Using Airwallex Borderless Cards, they can easily settle their digital subscriptions, which are often foreign transactions, with $0 handling fees.
Moreover, by using the Airwallex Borderless Card, SOULMATTE no longer has to manually do their account reconciliation at the end of each month. Instead, they can set monthly budgets and track spend in real time.
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!"
Henson Tsai
Founder, SleekFlow
"Importing the best wine and sake overseas always involve extra costs on transaction fee & FX fee. With Airwallex, we saved 100% of our overseas remittance cost and we could provide the best price for our customers."
Tomy Wu
Co-Founder, MyiCellar
"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 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
"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."
Rebekah
Business Development Director, Slowood
