July 2024 Summaries

Airwallex announced several product updates across business accounts, payments, spend management, and APIs, including the general availability of Airwallex Yield for Australian entities, which offers variable target returns on AUD and USD balances through investments in JPMorgan money market funds without lock-up periods, subject to investment risk and product disclosures. It also introduced Interac e-Transfer collections for Canadian-dollar Global Accounts for businesses with US or Canadian entities, with broader access planned from August 1, 2024. Its updated Shopify payments app now supports currency switching, local payment methods, and streamlined checkout information, while Afterpay is scheduled for phased availability in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US, and Canada. Upcoming spend-management features will allow multi-condition approval workflows for expenses, reimbursements, and bills using factors such as merchant categories and accounting data. For API and embedded-finance customers, Airwallex expanded FX capabilities by allowing businesses to choose between locked quotes and live market-rate conversions within one account, as well as add percentage markups to customer FX rates.

eCommerce payment processing enables online merchants to securely accept and settle customer payments by connecting payment gateways, processors, acquiring banks, and issuing banks. Transactions typically involve encrypted payment-data capture, authorisation by the customer’s bank, order fulfilment, and later settlement into the merchant’s account, with records retained for reconciliation. Providers must support security measures such as SSL encryption, PCI DSS standards, and 3D Secure authentication while accommodating payment options including cards, digital wallets, bank transfers, cryptocurrency, buy now, pay later services, mobile payments, prepaid cards, and invoicing. Key business challenges include cross-border fees and local payment preferences, fraud prevention, and the complexity of technical integration and maintenance. When selecting a provider, businesses are advised to assess scalability, customisation, security, settlement speed, and integration capabilities, while payment service providers such as Airwallex, banks such as HSBC, and ISOs such as Clearly Payments offer different models for facilitating transactions.