Pleo vs Airwallex: compare on fees, features and benefits

Today, efficiently managing international finances and expenses is crucial for success. Two leading platforms, Pleo and Airwallex, offer solutions to simplify these complex processes. This article compares their features, pricing models, and capabilities to help you determine which platform best suits your company's needs as you navigate the challenges of global financial management.

Read on to find out which is best for you as we compare them on price, features and benefits.

What is Pleo?

Pleo is a smart business spend management solution that simplifies expenses and provides companies with real-time financial oversight. 

Initially focused on the Danish market, Pleo has expanded across Europe and attracted sizeable funding rounds to fuel growth. Pleo is designed for startups and small/medium businesses across sectors seeking to modernise spend oversight. The platform scales to serve more complex global company requirements through an enterprise tier – at a greater cost.

What is Airwallex?

Airwallex is an end-to-end spend management platform. In addition to expense management, we facilitate cross-border FX and bill payments, global entity management, and multi-currency cards.

Where Pleo focuses on domestic expense management, Airwallex provides a platform to unify global spend management across entities. Airwallex features also extend beyond expense management, to payment acceptance/checkouts, multi-currency accounts in 23+ currencies, transfers & FX and international cards.

Airwallex is most suited for businesses that:

• have an international presence including: International entities, international vendors & multi-currency payment and account solutions

• Need greater control over corporate and employee spend

• Need to consolidate disparate point solutions into one end-to-end system

Compare Pleo with Airwallex

Use our comparison table to see how Pleo measures up against Airwallex on fees, features and benefits.

*£0/month if you deposit at least £10k per month or hold a minimum balance of £10k. For more information, see here.

For more information, see Sources & References section.

Pleo fees explained

Pleo uses an incremental Software-as-a-Service subscription model comprised of three primary plans each designed to serve companies at different stages of evolution.

Starter plan: Free for up to three users aimed at pre-seed startups and solopreneurs seeking basic but powerful expense oversight with surcharges kicking in for extra features.

Essential plan: £39 per month base for three users catering to seed/Series A ventures with growing budgets or geographical needs requiring enhanced controls, automation and support.  

Advanced plan: £89 per month base serving businesses at scale needing superior configuration abilities and specialised assistance managing complexity amid progress. 

While baseline features around automated reporting and accounting connectors begin free, add-on fees introduced on higher tiers cover areas like:

• Reimbursements

• Invoice payments  

• Bookkeeping access 

• Premium support

• User provisioning

So incremental costs accumulate for high transaction volumes typical of larger firms with overseas suppliers or distributed workforces. Foreign currency conversions also incur additional FX charges, adding further fees.

Pleo also offers a custom plan called Beyond which is designed for enterprise clients that need greater support and detail in their reporting.

Airwallex fees explained

Airwallex also charges a monthly subscription and per user cost, but includes global business accounts, market-leading FX, international payouts and payment acquiring. This makes spend management a part of a holistic global payments platform for your business.

Grow plan (£49 p/m): Airwallex has specifically designed its Grow plan (£49 p/m) to include all its spend management features. Some spend features like cards and spend limits are included in the Explore plan (£0-19p/m). For enterprise businesses who require more support and customisability the Accelerate plan includes account management support, NetSuite integrations and global entity management.

Per active user fee: first 5 active users free, then £6-12 per active user.

Additional inclusions in Airwallex plans:

Global business accounts: free multi-entity, multi-currency business accounts for accepting and holding 23 currencies.

Borderless virtual cards: spend directly in 10+ currencies with virtual and physical cards without being charged any foreign transaction fees.

International FX and payments: free international payouts for 110+ countries. If you need to convert currency, our FX rates are interbank rate + 0.5% for USD, HKD, CNY, AUD, EUR, GBP, CAD, SGD, CHF, NZD, JPY, or 1.0% for all other currencies.

Payment acquiring: Airwallex supports online payments from 160+ local payment methods in 180+ countries, including digital wallets, cards and more.

For more information on Airwallex pricing please visit our pricing page.

Airwallex vs Pleo additional features compared

Beyond baseline offerings around cards, reporting and integrations, several key differentiators separate Pleo and Airwallex across critical aspects when evaluating platforms to assist in managing corporate finances. 

International capabilities

• Pleo charges FX on international transactions from 1.49-2.49% above the interbank rate. Its products do not include multi-currency business accounts, so users will need open local accounts through third parties (such as banks).

• Airwallex provides local currency accounts in 23+ currencies and with local account details in 60+ markets globally.

Bill Pay

• Airwallex offers its Bill Pay product in its Grow plan (£49 p/m) for domestic and international payments at competitive FX rates. Airwallex offers custom multi-step approval flows, allowing or greater control.

• Pleo offers bill payments both domestically and internationally though the FX rates are generally higher than those offered by Airwallex at 2.5% compared to 0.5-1% respectively. Pleo offers a single approval process which provides simplicity, but may not scale when greater control is required.

Reimbursements

• Pleo allows domestic and international reimbursements. In the case of the latter, Pleo can reimburse employees in multiple currencies but it is the employee who accepts the FX fee. 

• Airwallex offers domestic and international reimbursements which can be paid directly (without FX fees) from the local currency account of the employer.  

Borderless cards 

• Pleo offers physical or virtual company and employee cards. These cards are prepaid Mastercard so require a regular top-up. They come with customisable budgets and the ability to set spending ‘rules’. They support all currencies supported by MasterCard.

• Airwallex Borderless Cards are Visa Debit cards which mean they draw directly from your Airwallex business account or multi-currency wallet. The cards can be spent directly in 10+ currencies, or any currency supported by Visa. The first five employee cards are free.

Accepting payments

• Pleo is an expense management solution and does not function as a payment gateway.

• Airwallex supports online payments from 160+ local payment methods in 180+ countries, including digital wallets, cards and more.

Final thoughts: Pleo and Airwallex

Ultimately, Pleo is a great point solution that assists startups and smaller businesses to achieve smarter, streamlined spend control by consolidating disconnected siloed processes across purchasing, reporting and oversight onto a unified intelligent platform.

Yet Pleo’s limitations constrain customisations required to match operational maturity, upon reaching greater geographical sophistication and revenue scale, warranting more tailored financial toolsets unlocking immense incremental value. 

Here’s where Airwallex differs.

Unlike Pleo, Airwallex is an end-to-end financial solution that covers expense management amid a broad suite of global payment capabilities. Although Pleo offers complete spend management features for domestic growing businesses, it struggles to support businesses with international entities, employees or customers, or provide end-to-end financial insight of a company’s global incomings as well as outgoings. 

Likewise, as an end-to-end platform Airwallex is designed to scale with a growing business, offering new functionality for each stage of growth within the same platform for business continuity. By using our platform for business accounts, transfers, employee cards, FX and reporting features, you’ll be able to save money elsewhere. 

Sources & References

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

• https://www.pleo.io/en/pricing 

• https://www.pleo.io/en/invoices

Disclaimer: We wrote this article in Q4 2024. The information was based on our own online research and we were not able to manually test each tool or provider. The information is provided for educational purposes only and a reader should consider the specific requirements of their business when evaluating providers. If you would like to request an update, feel free to contact us at [email protected].