Worldpay vs Airwallex: Compare on fees, features and benefits

If you’re an established retail business, you’ll likely need a payment processor to help you accept payments from your customers. Airwallex and Worldpay are both well-known providers that help businesses with an international presence make, take and manage payments, but each provider offers distinct features. 

Read on to find out which is best suited for your business as we compare Airwallex and Worldpay on price, features and benefits.

What is Worldpay?

Worldpay is a traditional payment gateway, processor and acquirer that offers in-person point of sale (POS) and online payment solutions. It helps businesses accept payments from customers.

Used by merchants of all sizes, from large multinational corporations to local brick-and-mortar stores, Worldpay supports a variety of payment methods across different channels including credit and debit cards, digital wallets, mobile payments and direct debits. It’s most popular with physical retailers.

What is Airwallex? 

Airwallex is a financial platform that offers payment processing (including gateway and acquiring) services all-in-one, which means companies can accept payments globally (via checkout, plugins or payment links) and manage their financial operations on the same platform. Airwallex provides a broader suite of services beyond payment acceptance, including: multi-currency accounts, payouts to 150+ countries, expense management, company and employee cards and advanced API integrations.

Compare Worldpay vs Airwallex

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

Compare key features between Worldpay and Airwallex

Which online payment gateway suits your needs best? Let’s look at some additional features.

Payment gateway

• Worldpay offers both POS and online gateway services. For its POS solution, Worldpay charges from £17.95 per month. For its gateway solution, it'll cost 1.5% to accept Visa and Mastercard payments although these fees vary based on turnover. Additional charges apply for Diner Club and American Express.

• Airwallex offers an online payment gateway, allowing you to accept customer payments via checkout and payment links. Processing fees start from 1.3% + £0.20 for UK cards.

Integrations and plugins

• Worldpay offers eCommerce integrations to Magento and commercetools, and ERP integrations to Netsuite, SAP and Salesforce. It is unclear from the Worldpay website how much development is required.

• Airwallex offers low code eCommerce plugins to Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and others, and ERP and accounting integrations to Xero, QuickBooks, Netsuite and others. Airwallex also offers a comprehensive suite of APIs.

Enhanced features

• Adaptive success rate optimisation: Airwallex’s ML-powered optimisation engine includes smart MCC assignment, automatic retries, ISO message optimisations, 3DS logic, and more to improve acceptance rates.

• Saved payment details: Airwallex allows customers to drive repeat sales by initiating payments based on your customers’ saved payment details.

• Network tokenisation: With Airwallex, merchants can replace payment details with network-issued tokens to improve card acceptance rates and reduce processing costs.

Payment methods

• For enterprise customers, Worldpay offers 300+ payment methods, covering 126+ currencies³. This includes card POS terminals for retailers with physical stores.

• Airwallex facilitates online payments including major card schemes, 160+ local payment methods in 180+ countries, no-code payment links and customisable checkouts via API.

Borderless cards

• Worldpay doesn’t currently offer any corporate or employee cards.

• Airwallex Borderless Cards can be used in 10+ currencies, or any currency supported by Visa. The first five employee cards are free.

Expense management

• Worldpay Dashboard lets you view sales, transaction history, cashflow and invoices, but doesn’t provide detailed expenses insight.

• With Airwallex you can track and control international spend, set limits, activate multi-layer approvals, submit expenses and reimburse employees.

Worldpay fees explained

Worldpay fees vary based on business type and size. Transparent pricing is not easily available on the Worldpay website, so we have used the online pricing quote tool⁵ to show some indicative costs. 

• Online card transactions: domestic transactions for businesses with annual card turnover of £250,000: 0.8-2.4% + 4.5p.

• In person card transactions: domestic transactions for businesses with annual card turnover of £250,000: 0.4-2% + 4.5p.

• POS terminal: From £17.95 p/m. 

International fees and FX rates aren’t available online, so you’ll have to get in touch with the Worldpay sales team for more information.

Airwallex fees, explained

Our fees are different. We’re transparent about our pricing and offer simple subscription plans from £19 p/m.

• Business account: free multi-currency business account, where you can accept and hold 23 currencies.

• Card transactions: Spend directly in 10+ countries with virtual and physical cards with 0% foreign transaction fees. When you don’t have the currency balance, we’ll auto-convert your available funds at market-leading FX rates.

• International payments: in 120+ countries, 0% transaction fees when using local payment networks. If you need to convert currencies, 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.

Final thoughts: Worldpay or Airwallex?

For eCommerce businesses who primarily sell online across markets, Airwallex is hard to beat.

Many of Worldpay’s products are tailored to physical retail stores or multi-channel operators, and the lack of pricing transparency (especially around FX rates) can make it tricky to forecast margins and whether the investment is worth it, or indeed may leave merchants blindsided when they receive their quote.

Both providers support a variety of payment methods and currencies, although Worldpay charges monthly fees and transaction fees can vary a lot. Plus, as a more mature company, Worldpay has been criticised for clunky systems and lacking popular integrations like Xero⁶ and QuickBooks.

In contrast, Airwallex is designed to support ambitious companies beyond payment processing, so we offer a variety of additional features such as expense management, company and employee cards, as well as extensive bank transfer coverage, and the tools and integrations to manage funds across multiple entities and markets.

For fast-moving, ambitious companies looking to go global, Airwallex combines advanced technology, leading rates and financial tools to simplify and streamline money management.

Sources

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

1. https://www.worldpay.com/en-GB/products/simplicity-payment-gateway

2. https://www.worldpay.com/en-GB/products/worldpay-ecommerce

3. https://www.worldpay.com/en-GB/products/online

4. https://www.worldpay.com/en-GB/enterprise/alternative-payment-methods

5. https://go.worldpay.com/pricing

 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].