September 2024 Summaries

Airwallex has introduced self-service Apple Pay activation through its API for payment plugin, core API, and embedded finance customers, reducing reliance on manual setup and simplifying domain registration management. The company also plans to add Discover and Diners Club card acceptance for businesses in Asia-Pacific and Europe, aiming to support U.S. commerce and improve authorization rates, while Shopify merchants using Afterpay will soon be able to offer the payment method across checkout currencies with a faster checkout experience. For embedded finance platforms, new Application Fees functionality enables automated, real-time transaction-based fee collection, settlement, reporting, and reconciliation in supported currencies. Airwallex API customers can additionally access expanded deposit details, including payer, bank account, fee, currency, and banking-provider information, to support monitoring, reporting, and reconciliation.

Open banking is an ecosystem in which banks securely share customer-authorized financial data and services with third-party providers through application programming interfaces (APIs), enabling products such as budgeting tools, payment gateways, investment platforms, and buy-now-pay-later services. APIs authenticate third parties, use temporary access tokens, and return requested data or execute functions such as payments, while aggregators can simplify connections across multiple banks. Driven in part by regulations such as the European Union’s PSD2, open banking can support business automation, transaction analysis, personalized customer experiences, and financial-product innovation. Businesses can use these integrations to process payments, automate payouts, manage foreign-exchange exposure, and issue virtual cards, while firms including Airwallex, Robinhood, and Klarna use open banking for different financial services. Airwallex presents its API platform as a tool for integrating payment collection, payouts, foreign exchange, and card issuing into business workflows, while noting that the material is informational rather than legal, tax, regulatory, or investment advice.

SWIFT is a long-established global financial messaging network that enables banks and other institutions to communicate payment instructions for international transfers, rather than moving or holding funds itself. Founded in Brussels in the 1970s, it standardized bank identification through SWIFT or BIC codes and now connects more than 11,000 institutions across 212 countries, supporting cross-border payments as well as compliance, cybersecurity, treasury, and market-infrastructure services. International transfers require sender and recipient details, the receiving bank’s SWIFT code, and often an IBAN, with funds typically routed through one or more banks and delivered in one to five business days. While SWIFT is valued for security, reliability, and global reach, transfers can incur transaction, intermediary, and foreign-exchange fees that may be difficult to predict. Its central role in international banking also gives it geopolitical significance, as sanctioned banks have been disconnected from the network under EU measures involving Iran, Russia, and Belarus. Although SWIFT remains widely used by banks, corporations, financial-market participants, and individuals, newer payment providers promote faster, lower-cost transfers through local payment rails and other alternatives.

Online travel agencies manage complex global payment flows involving multiple suppliers, currencies, cancellations, deferred charges, reconciliation demands, and regulatory requirements, creating exposure to fees, fraud, and reduced margins. Single-use virtual cards are digital cards generated for one transaction, with fixed spending limits, unique card details, and short validity periods, and can be issued automatically through an API for individual parts of a customer booking. They enable agencies to pay suppliers immediately or at scheduled times, link payments and refunds to booking metadata, simplify cancellation handling, and support deferred hotel charges. Their one-time-use design, transaction controls, merchant restrictions, and ability to freeze or cancel cards can improve payment security, while centralized dashboards and accounting integrations can streamline record-keeping and reconciliation. The material presents Airwallex’s issuing API and multi-currency accounts as a solution that can automate global supplier payments, reduce foreign-exchange and international transaction costs, provide compliance and security features, and potentially offer cashback revenue.