The Airwallex Podcast
00:09:30 · Jack Zhang, Shannon Scott
[00:09:30] S0: Yeah. And think about it, like, if you actually run this not just in one country, run it in many countries, and how disjoint that's going be. Say if you're using Concur or Ramp in The US, and using a PLEO in Europe, or using another software in Australia, and you have all these different entities that you have to worry about, how do you actually creating this holistic view to run your business autonomously with AI? They're just impossible. And the better way to do that is using a single platform to consolidating all your financial operations globally so that you can see all the money and money out to have all the workflow set up in a single platform so you don't have to worry [00:10:08] S1: about it. And then you can see that full lineage. You don't have to worry about sort of like like risk issues or perhaps like, like, any changes happening off system because you can see the lineage all the way from the vendor through the approval flows. Maybe there's a funds transfer in the middle and and then and then the payout actually happens. [00:10:23] S0: Yeah. And the the beauty of that is not just global, but also the vertical integration between the AI [00:10:27] S1: and the software and the infrastructure. If we talk about infrastructure for a minute, like like, how deep does it go?
00:10:27 · Shannon Scott, Jack Zhang
[00:10:27] S1: and the software and the infrastructure. If we talk about infrastructure for a minute, like like, how deep does it go? [00:10:33] S0: Well, we started the the business by building the best money movement infrastructure because money movement is the most primitive financial infrastructure in the world. Right? It doesn't matter what services you provide in financial services, you need to move the money. Building the best money mover infrastructure will kind of give us that kind of best foundation to extend that into payment acceptance and also bill pay and then sort of spend and pay out. But more importantly, that we have this multi currency infrastructure that allow you to process in transactions in over 180 countries around the world. In all these local currencies, you don't have to worry about getting charged three, 4% of hidden FX fees. Once the money come in, you can have all this visibility of these currencies in your wallet, and you're converting these currencies either manually or autonomously with kind of interbank rate with a small fee. And then you can manage all your spend on the platform as well. You have money movement infrastructure integrated with bill pay or payroll when using the software, and it's fully vertically integrated with your ERP as well, you don't have to worry about any manual reconciliation.
00:11:41 · Shannon Scott
[00:11:41] S1: Let's sort of consider this scenario. So as a business, you're trying to invoice your customers. I know we recently acquired Open Pay and their billing solution, for example. So we have the software that helps the business actually generate the subscription, generate the invoice. We can now use Airwallex's payment solutions to actually allow that customer to settle that invoice to make a payment online. Independent of the currency, it's settled directly into our... Into Airwallex's wallet infrastructure. So it could be euros, could be USD, it could be pounds. And then when you think about your outgoings, you're using Airwallex spend to actually understand who are my suppliers, have I actually received the goods that I wanted. This doesn't match the purchase order or the invoice they send me, and then I can schedule a transfer. I could potentially put the funds in yield in the meantime if the if the funds are due in thirty days, and then the payout actually happens in Airwallex in the same currency itself.
00:12:28 · Jack Zhang, Shannon Scott
[00:12:28] S0: You know, exactly. As as you know, another example is issue our AI business out of Silicon Valley, and you have customers in UK and Europe, and you have customers in Australia. And instead of paying 23% to process payment converting to US dollar, you can basically settle directly in, you know, GBP and Euro or Aussie to your multi currency wallet. And you might have expenses from a marketing, from a from a payroll standpoint in those local currency. You don't need to worry about paying, you know, another currency conversion from USD to those local currencies, right? You just have a wallet, Euro, GBP, and Aussie comes into the wallet, and you have expenses that goes out from the wallet as well. Yeah. And it's extremely efficient. [00:13:07] S1: So in that whole lineage that I just described, and and and you expanded, like, wasn't even a currency conversion there. If you can actually just, like, keep the funds in the same currency, it's in and out in the same way, and it's all through the same infrastructure. [00:13:18] S0: And the beauty is that you have, you know, the billing software to kind of does all your usage based billing, that you also have... We build an aux trader that, you know, through kind of integration with Openpay, that you can have many processors that you can use, whether it's Strivel, whether it's Audient and Airwallet, and you can kind of basically route your transactions based on the best success rate of of of the transactions. And then Airwallet would handle the rest.
00:13:18 · Jack Zhang, Shannon Scott
[00:13:18] S0: And the beauty is that you have, you know, the billing software to kind of does all your usage based billing, that you also have... We build an aux trader that, you know, through kind of integration with Openpay, that you can have many processors that you can use, whether it's Strivel, whether it's Audient and Airwallet, and you can kind of basically route your transactions based on the best success rate of of of the transactions. And then Airwallet would handle the rest. [00:13:49] S1: I think that's really cool too, actually. So if you if you are sort of using Airwallet as part of your financial infrastructure and managing the currencies, but you are also using one of these other requires, you can still do that. You can use sort of Arolix's Yeah. Services mean, and if you are [00:14:02] S0: a UFO entrepreneur in your business, you just want leveraging the best technology to give you the best success rate. Because essentially, like, 1% of the difference is 1% of your revenue, and that matters. And to leveraging the Ox Trader give you that sort of flexibility and redundancy to allow you to do that most efficiently.
00:14:02 · Jack Zhang, Shannon Scott
[00:14:02] S0: a UFO entrepreneur in your business, you just want leveraging the best technology to give you the best success rate. Because essentially, like, 1% of the difference is 1% of your revenue, and that matters. And to leveraging the Ox Trader give you that sort of flexibility and redundancy to allow you to do that most efficiently. [00:14:19] S1: If we talk more about payment acceptance, like I think a lot of, like merchants or a lot of consumers, we don't even realize how hard it is sometimes for a card transaction to be successful, and that's particularly true when you're making an international transaction. So the customer might be, you know, in in Europe, for example, and and you're selling to them from an entity in The US. It's it's... I'm so impressed with our our risk and our our authorization team. Like, they have just put so much effort into understanding international spend, understanding all of the different payment networks around the world. And this is why some of the biggest ecommerce retailers actually choose Airwallex because their authorization rates are so much higher than the competition. And while Airwallex might not be as well known as, like, some well established players, actually, we've got some of the best in class auth rates of of any other players in that