Adyen vs Airwallex: compare on fees, features and benefits

For Singapore SMEs, expanding into cross-border eCommerce is a key area for growth. The combined eCommerce market size of Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand is expected to reach over USD 83 billion by 2025,¹ and savvy SME owners should take advantage of this large customer base early.

Southeast Asia is a diverse region, and a localised shopping experience is necessary to attract and convert customers. To achieve this, your eCommerce venture will require a robust payment gateway that accepts local payment methods and currencies at reasonable rates. 

In this article, we'll take a look at Adyen vs Airwallex and see how their eCommerce payment solutions stack up in terms of features and fees.

What is Adyen? 

Adyen is a global payments platform that allows businesses to accept payments online, on mobile phones, and at the point of sale. The company was founded in 2006 in Amsterdam by a team of entrepreneurs, including current CEO Pieter van der Does and incumbent CTO Arnout Schuijff. 

The initial focus was to create advanced analytics tools to help businesses optimise their payment processes. Eventually, Adyen transitioned to offering end-to-end payment capabilities and financial products.

Over the years, Adyen obtained licences to operate as a payment institution across Europe, North America and Latin America. In 2015, they established their regional headquarters in Singapore and got the Major Payment Institution licence from the MAS in 2023.²

Adyen’s key services include:

• Online payments. Accept payments from major credit cards and 90+ local payment methods in 70+ countries.³

• In-person payments. Accept in-person payments through the Adyen mobile app, countertop terminals, and unattended point-of-sale devices.

• Unified commerce.  Adyen’s omnichannel solution allows all customer payment data to be integrated into one system. This makes it easier to offer seamless cross-channel experiences, simplify reconciliation, and gain customer insights.

• Revenue optimisation. Access data-driven tools to enhance authorisation rates, prevent fraud, and reduce chargebacks.

• Embedded financial products. Adyen’s embedded finance products let businesses integrate payments into their platform or create white-labelled financial solutions like business accounts, business loans, virtual cards, and global payouts.

What is Airwallex?

Founded in 2015, Airwallex is a financial platform that simplifies international payments for global businesses of all sizes. It offers an all-in-one Business Account with everything you need to manage cross-border financial operations. 

The business account includes a payment gateway with like-for-like settlement. It means you can accept eCommerce payments in USD, GBP, and 8 other leading currencies without converting them to SGD. This means you can accept USD payments from clients, hold the USD in your Airwallex multi-currency account, and use those funds to pay out to suppliers in USD, thus saving on unnecessary conversion fees. 

Airwallex lets you accept eCommerce payments from 180+ currencies and countries via 160+ local payment methods. For currencies where like-for-like currencies aren’t supported, Airwallex converts them using market-leading foreign exchange rates.

The Airwallex Business Account also comes with the following features:

• Multi-currency Global Accounts. Collect, hold and transact balances in 23+ major currencies including GBP, USD, EUR, AUD, CAD, CNY and more. Each currency account is assigned unique account details for local and international payments. 

• International transfers with low or no transfer fees. Airwallex works with local payment rails in 110+ countries and economic territories like the EU. If you use local payment methods to send international payments, you bypass the SWIFT network and pay low or no fees. 70% of our transfers arrive on the same day.

• Friendly exchange rates and transparent fees. When you make overseas transfers with Airwallex, you’ll always see the exchange rate, markup, and fees before completing the transaction.

• Multi-currency Borderless Cards. Issue physical and virtual Borderless Cards for free, and use them wherever VISA cards are accepted.

• Software integrations. Airwallex integrates seamlessly with accounting software like Xero and eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify. This lets you automate workflows across your business while streamlining accounting and sales data.

• Bills and accounts payable. Airwallex centralises accounts payable workflows so finance teams can consolidate domestic and global supplier payments. Batch payments of up to 1,000 can be automated across currencies and countries through Airwallex.

• Embedded finance solutions. Like Adyen, Airwallex also offers end-to-end payments, banking-as-a service, and global treasury for marketplaces and platforms.

Adyen's pricing explained

Adyen’s payment gateway has two types of pricing models. 

Interchange++ pricing model

•  Fees broken down into 3 components: an interchange fee from the card issuer, a card scheme fee from the card network, and a markup for the payment gateway. 

• Offers greater transparency into cost drivers but the fees' variable nature makes it difficult to forecast payment gateway cost

Blended pricing

• Most common pricing model

• An all-inclusive fee as a fixed percentage per transaction

• Rates vary by card brand, business model, and geography

Adyen’s fees explained

The pricing model varies depending on the payment method. Adyen applies Interchange++ pricing for card payments using Maestro, Mastercard and Visa. For other payment methods like digital wallets or buy-now-pay-later (BNPL), Adyen charges blended pricing.⁴

All payment methods also come with an SGD 0.13 Adyen processing fee.

Here are some examples of Adyen fees in Singapore:

Airwallex's pricing explained

Like Stripe, Airwallex uses a simple blended pricing model for payment gateway transactions. For major card networks like Visa, Mastercard and American Express, fees are 3.30% for locally-issued cards and 3.60% for overseas cards. Local payment methods in 180+ countries are charged a percentage of the transaction. Interchange++ pricing is also available for businesses that require it.

Our transparent fee schedule makes it easy to forecast how much it will cost to support your customers’ favourite payment methods.

Adyen vs Airwallex additional capabilities

Sources: Adyen pricing, Adyen currencies as of 1 June 2024

Beyond core payments, Adyen and Airwallex provide supplementary tools to help companies transact globally:

APIs and integrations

• Adyen and Airwallex offers API endpoints and plugins for leading eCommerce platforms like Shopify and integrates with accounting software like Xero 

• Adyen’s APIs integrate with ERP and POS systems, which allows businesses to use POS terminals and sync the data with their Adyen account

Risk management

• Adyen’s RevenueProtect tool leverages data across its network to block fraud and minimise chargebacks in real-time

• Airwallex’s pre-chargeback programme and smart retry logic reduces chargebacks and improves payment acceptance rates.  

Billing

• Adyen users can email hosted PayByLinks for one-off invoice collections

• Airwallex lets you create Payment Links that you can embed on invoices or share on social.

Support

• Adyen follows a premium onboarding and technical account management model for enterprise clients

• Airwallex offers email, chat, and phone support to all customers and dedicated account managers to eligible businesses

Final thoughts

Adyen delivers a powerful solution for enterprise companies that process high payment volumes across in-store and digital channels. Its single platform for unified commerce and embedded financial products is attractive to high-GMV (gross merchandise volume) brands.  

For small and medium businesses that operate globally or are rapidly expanding beyond Singapore, Airwallex offers more comprehensive global payment capabilities with powerful features, and embedded finance for enterprises:

• Accept payment from 180+ countries and regions via 160+ payment methods.

• Payout to suppliers and staff in multiple currencies directly from your Global Account. 

• Market-leading foreign exchange fees

• Seamless integration with Shopify, WooCommerce and other leading eCommerce platforms.

• Free-to-issue virtual and debit cards with 1% cashback on all spending categories, including marketing spend and business travel

• Choose from flexible integration options, ranging from a simple plug-and-play solution to a fully customisable checkout.

• Reduce chargebacks and improve payment acceptance rates with our pre-chargeback program and smart retry logic.  

• Protect your funds and data with our 3DS fraud engine. 

• Embedded finance solutions like Global Treasury, banking as service and payments for platforms

Transparent blended fees mean that your costs are always predictable even when transaction volumes fluctuate. So while Adyen remains a compelling enterprise-grade payments provider, Airwallex is uniquely positioned to help aspiring eCommerce SMEs grow beyond Singapore.

Local businesses like Wine Kin and Dreamcore already use Airwallex for eCommerce payments. Create a free Airwallex account today.

Sources & references: 

For more information on Airwallex, visit Airwallex Business Account and Airwallex pricing

^1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1292076/sea-e-commerce-market-size-by-country/

^2. https://www.adyen.com/press-and-media/adyen-now-licensed-under-payment-services-act-as-a-major-payments-institution-in-singapore

^3. https://www.adyen.com/payment-methods?channel=Online

^4.  https://www.adyen.com/pricing

*Note: This publication does not constitute legal, tax, or professional advice from Airwallex nor substitute seeking such advice, and makes no express or implied representations/warranties/guarantees regarding content accuracy, completeness, or currency.