The trade rewiring: How businesses are using payment data to find new markets

Payment transaction data can serve as market intelligence for businesses considering cross-border expansion by revealing emerging demand through transaction volumes, authorisation rates, settlement patterns, local payment preferences, and foreign-exchange costs. Combining these internal signals with external sources such as trade reports, search trends, and card-network data can help distinguish scalable opportunities from limited demand, while country-level decline codes and approval rates may identify checkout barriers such as missing local payment methods, routing limitations, or authentication issues. Profitability also depends on settlement speed, currency conversion practices, intermediary fees, and average transaction values, meaning strong sales volumes may not always produce attractive margins. The piece argues that local payment options and like-for-like currency settlement can improve conversion and margin protection, but fragmented systems can delay action on these insights. It presents Airwallex as an integrated platform for payment acceptance, multi-currency accounts, FX, spend management, and AI-supported payment optimization, while emphasizing that firms able to interpret and act on payment data quickly may be better positioned as trade corridors and market conditions continue to change.

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