DigitSense streamlines global payments and saves on FX fees with Airwallex
How Airwallex’s fast international payments and easy-to-open corporate cards help the Hong Kong-based global digital product development house.
<30 minutes
needed to settle global transactions
<48 hours
needed to open an Airwallex global account
140+ currencies
available for quick global transactions
DigitSense is a digital product development company offering software product design, development, and digital marketing services.
Company size
10 - 20 employees
Location
Hong Kong
Industry
Technology Services
DigitSense is a digital product development company based in Hong Kong that offers services covering digital product design, development, and digital marketing. Founded in 2020 by Moon Yiu, DigitSense helps global tech companies build new consumer websites and apps, and take them to market through highly effective digital marketing strategies.
At its core, DigitSense is a global business. It works with an international team of tech and digital marketing experts based in the UK, Japan, Indonesia, and more, with more than 80% of their clients are from the US, Singapore and Europe.
However, to operate at a cross-border level comes with its own set of challenges: it is extremely expensive and difficult to carry out global transactions through traditional banks given the limited resources of a startup. That’s why DigitSense decided to switch over to Airwallex to streamline their growing international operations.
Moon Yiu
Founder & CEO of DigitSense
“If my friend wants to start a business, I will definitely recommend Airwallex, especially with the efficiency and ease of use . Basically, you can complete your application within just a few clicks.”
Challenge 1: Traditional bank charges expensive FX rates, eating up 5% of the profit
80% of DigitSense’s revenue comes from the US. Using traditional banks for their global transactions, the costly transaction fees and FX rates have taken away up to 5% of the company’s profit in the past.
Furthermore, DigitSense needs to be able to pay their overseas suppliers quickly. Traditional banks usually take a long time to process global transactions, which can cause cash flow problems for small businesses like DigitSense.
Solution & Results: Airwallex offers market-leading FX rates to minimise global transaction costs
Airwallex offers currency conversion service at a highly competitive, market-leading rate, helping DigitSense to reduce FX costs.
Using Airwallex, DigitSense is also able to complete their overseas transactions in just 30 minutes, removing any friction from their day-to-day overseas transitions.
Moon Yiu
Founder & CEO of DigitSense
“The most convenient thing about Airwallex is that each transaction takes only minutes to half an hour to be settled.”
Challenge 2: DigitSense requires a global payment gateway for their international client base
DigitSense serves clients from all around the globe. When it comes to customer payments, the process of traditional bank transfers is painfully slow and complicated. Most clients also prefer to pay by card, which poses a challenge as many payment gateway providers often charge an expensive FX rate, or only offer payouts in HKD.
Solution & Results: Airwallex offers a fast, convenient and cost-saving payment solution
Airwallex’s global payment gateway helps to ease the overall process of customer payment collection in terms of speed and efficiency. DigitSense can simply send an Airwallex payment link to their clients for them to easily settle the bill via credit card payment. DigitSense can then quickly collect the payment without having to incur any TT fees for major currencies — a win-win situation for both DigitSense and their clients.
Challenge 3: Difficult to open corporate cards
DigitSense pays for multiple SaaS subscriptions — including tools for productivity, remote communication tools, and software development — which are oftentimes charged in USD. Corporate cards offered by traditional banks in Hong Kong are not only notoriously difficult to apply for, they usually come with a base currency of HKD or RMB. This translates into expensive FX rates when settling overseas monthly bills in USD.
Solution & Results: Easy to create Airwallex Borderless Cards online
DigitSense has created free Airwallex Borderless Cards for their overseas employees to purchase hardware and other tools locally. Using this multi-currency virtual card, employees can choose from more than 140 currencies to settle their company expenses, without having to worry about the different FX rates. Moon is also able to better track employee spending in real-time, including their business trip expenses and entertainment fees; and set monthly spend limits to stay on top of the company budget.
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
