Wallex vs Airwallex: Compare on fees, features and benefits

If your business sells internationally or works with overseas suppliers, you'll need a reliable cross-border payment solution to manage your global transactions. Both Wallex and Airwallex provide global payment services, but with different fee structures, features, and benefits. In this article, we'll compare Wallex vs Airwallex to help you decide which one is best for your business.

What is Wallex?

Wallex is a cross-border FX and payments platform founded in 2016. The Singapore-based fintech company enables you to send and receive money around the world and handle currency exchanges.

With the Wallex multi-currency business account, you can hold and manage multiple currencies. However, the platform is missing some additional features you’d find in other financial platforms, like employee debit cards, expense management, and integrations with softwares and eCommerce platforms.

What is Airwallex?

Airwallex is an end-to-end financial operations platform that helps businesses manage their cross-border payments. Like Wallex, we provide multi-currency accounts, global money transfers, and foreign exchange services. In addition, we've partnered with local payment rails to minimise transfer fees.

Beyond our similarities with Wallex, we offer international company and employee cards for managing company expenses, payment gateway services to enable seamless online transactions and more.

Compare Wallex vs Airwallex

Use our table to compare the fees and features of Airwallex and Wallex.

Compare key features between Wallex and Airwallex

Multi-currency business accounts

Wallex and Airwallex both provide multi-currency accounts for businesses. With Wallex, you can hold, pay, and receive 13 currencies – SGD, IDR, HKD, THB, MYR, PHP, CNY, and more – in one digital wallet. Using Airwallex, you can open local currency accounts to hold and receive 23+ currencies, including USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, CNY, JPY, and more. This allows you to get paid in foreign currencies just as easily as you would in your home currency. You can collect, hold, and send funds in the same currency, so incoming funds won’t automatically convert to SGD, which helps you avoid unnecessary conversion fees.

FX and global transfers

As fintech providers, Wallex and Airwallex provide more competitive foreign exchange rates and lower transfer fees compared to traditional banks. Wallex supports international payments in 47+ currencies and their FX rate is near mid-market. The platform claims to allow instant transfers for popular currencies like SGD, IDR, and HKD, as well as same-day transfers in 20+ currencies.²

Using Airwallex, you can make payments in 60+ currencies while enjoying market-leading FX rates. The platform supports payouts to 150+ countries and leverages local payment rails in 120+ countries. By tapping into local networks like Alipay and WeChat Pay, your transfers can bypass the SWIFT network, eliminating costly transfer fees. This also means that nearly 65% of transactions are instant and 90% of funds via local payment rails arrive within a few hours or the same day.

Wallex fees, explained

Wallex offers a pay-as-you-go pricing structure. Per-transaction fees are charged when you:

• Make an international transfer

• Collect a payment from your customer

• Convert your funds into another currency

The exact charges are currently not publicly available on Wallex's pricing page.³

Airwallex fees, explained

Airwallex helps simplify global payments and financial operations with zero hidden fees. Main charges across the services we provide include:  

• Global transfers: Airwallex charges a fee for each transfer, with costs varying based on the transfer method. 90% of all Airwallex transactions to 120+ countries go through local payment rails, which incurs no SWIFT fees. Otherwise, 20-35 SGD is charged per SWIFT transfer.

• FX conversions: 0.4% above interbank exchange rates for AUD, USD, HKD, CNY, JPY, EUR, GBP, CAD, CHF, NZD, SGD, and 0.6% for all other currencies.

• Payment acceptance: For each transaction, 3.3% plus S$0.50 for domestic cards, 3.6% plus S$0.50 for international cards, and S$0.50 plus payment method fee for local payment methods such as WeChat Pay, GrabPay and 160+ other payment methods. 

• Airwallex Borderless Cards: Our virtual company and employee cards are free to create and come with no international transaction fees and unlimited 1% cashback. 

Compare additional features between Wallex and Airwallex

• Avoid double conversion fees with Airwallex’s payment gateway: Currently, Wallex does not provide any eCommerce payment gateway services or payment links. On the other hand, Airwallex offers seamless integrations with popular eCommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce. This allows international customer payments to go straight into your multi-currency Airwallex account without any forced conversion.

• Multi-currency debit cards: While Wallex does not offer employee and company cards, you can create free corporate business cards with Airwallex as an alternative way to manage your company expenses, such as online ad spend, SaaS subscriptions, and business travel expenses. This feature can help you save on international transaction fees, earn unlimited 1% cashback, and track employee spending in multiple currencies.

• Expense management: Wallex simplifies the reconciliation process by integrating accounts receivables and payables and basic reporting tools on one platform.⁴ Airwallex goes one step further by offering integrations with accounting software like Xero and Quickbooks, eliminating the need for manual data entry.

• Payment links: Wallex currently lacks support for payment links. Using Airwallex’s Payment Links, which offers an alternative to our payment gateway, you can accept customer payments via credit cards and 160+ local payment methods. Embed the Payment Link directly into your invoice or share it with your customers via email, social media, and messaging apps to get paid quickly.

Choose Airwallex as your all-in-one global payments solution

Airwallex offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to cater to the diverse needs of businesses of all sizes, providing a wider global reach and more extensive capabilities compared to Wallex. 

While Wallex focuses on supporting startups with its FX and cross-border payment capabilities, it may not offer the additional features required by businesses looking to scale and streamline their financial operations.

Airwallex enables businesses to easily send and collect payments around the world through multiple methods. The platform is uniquely positioned to support businesses in managing their financial operations in one place. Whether you need to pay employees in different countries, accept payments from customers overseas, or simply manage expenses in multiple currencies, Airwallex provides the tools to scale your business cost-effectively. This allows businesses to focus on expanding into new markets without worrying about the complexity of cross-border transactions.

Sources

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

1. https://www.wallex.asia/en-sg/business-solutions/multi-currency-wallets

2. https://www.wallex.asia/en-sg/business-solutions/global-payments 

3. https://www.wallex.asia/en-sg/pricing 

4. https://www.wallex.asia/en-sg/business-solutions/collect-payments 

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. If you would like to request an update, feel free to contact us at [[email protected]]. Airwallex (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. (201626561Z) is licensed as a Major Payment Institution and regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.