May 2023 Summaries

Airwallex’s May releases introduce faster one-click checkout payments with improved mobile usability, alongside support for Atome’s buy-now-pay-later service and more than 160 payment methods. The company expanded like-for-like settlement to Canadian dollars, New Zealand dollars, and Swiss francs, enabling merchants to settle directly into their Airwallex Wallets and potentially avoid foreign-exchange fees. Businesses can now migrate saved customer card data from other payment processors, customise transfer approval workflows, export expense data as CSV files or automatically sync it with Xero and QuickBooks, and view assigned contacts for Company Cards more easily. Planned additions include custom-branded Employee Cards, replacement-card delivery options, and enhanced payout validation intended to improve upon the current 99% payout success rate.

Nalin Natrajan, Airwallex’s Financial Partnerships Manager in Singapore, describes himself as a third-culture kid whose early life spanned India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore before he studied at Northwestern University in Chicago and spent time working and studying in China. His career has included roles across consumer and medical products, education technology, fintech, and product management, including launches at Razer and Better Trade Off, before he joined Airwallex to manage relationships with card networks and digital wallet providers. He acts as a cross-functional bridge supporting the company’s global financial infrastructure rollout, drawing on product-management skills in stakeholder coordination, project delivery, financial-institution engagement, and product knowledge. A notable responsibility has been becoming Airwallex’s primary contact for its issuing partnership with Visa. Outside work, Natrajan enjoys sports, gaming, photography, travel, sailing, sea activities, and wine, holding yachting qualifications and a WSET Level 3 wine certification. He cites Tim Berners-Lee and Linus Torvalds as inspirations for their foundational, openly collaborative contributions to modern technology.

Airwallex reports continued expansion of its global financial infrastructure in 2023, citing nearly US$50 billion in annualized transaction volume last year and strong first-quarter growth in collections, payouts, payment processing, and card activity compared with Q1 2022. The company expanded its borderless collections, local payouts, payment acceptance, local payment methods, and card-issuing coverage across dozens of countries and currencies, while planning further growth in Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and the Middle East. It also emphasized infrastructure performance, reporting a 99% payout success rate, a 4.2-hour average payout time, improved fraud and chargeback management, an in-house issuing processor rollout in Australia, and 24/7 operational support from 13 global locations. Product updates included treasury, spend management, expense categorization, approval workflows, Xero invoice payments, and Airwallex Pay beta features for Business Account users, alongside embedded payment, treasury, banking-as-a-service, API reporting, and cross-border onboarding enhancements for platform customers.