Airwallex: Global payments made simple, with a 30,000 miles welcome bonus

If you’re an SME looking to grow beyond Singapore, you’re probably all too familiar with the financial and operational headaches involved, like cross-border fees, inflated exchange rates, slow payments, and complicated billing arrangements for overseas customers.

That’s on top of the usual day-to-day tasks that any SME whether local or internationalised needs to deal with, such as bill payments, payroll, expense approvals and employee reimbursements.

Thankfully, there’s Airwallex, an all-in-one solution for collecting payments, managing funds and overseeing expenditures, allowing you to focus on growing your business at home or overseas instead of trawling through receipts to figure out who tried to expense kitty litter.

Read on to learn how you can earn a welcome bonus of up to 30,000 Max Miles, including 20,000 Max Miles just for opening a free Airwallex Business Account. 

What is Airwallex?

Airwallex is a global payments and financial platform that enables SMEs to make and receive payments in multiple currencies worldwide, while simplifying treasury and expense management. 

An Airwallex business account provides: 

• High-speed international transfers
• Global Accounts
• Borderless Cards
• Expense management and reimbursements
• Online payments
• Bill payments

Airwallex’s global payments network is connected to local payment rails and clearing systems, allowing payouts to clear as quickly as one business day. Businesses enjoy real-time access to competitive FX rates, sending fast payments to more than 110 countries while avoiding the hefty markups usually imposed by banks.

Global Accounts allow businesses to open domestic and foreign currency accounts in minutes, without the need to visit a physical bank branch. 

These global accounts have local bank details in 23 currencies and 60+ countries, allowing companies to invoice international customers like a local entity in their preferred currency, or to spend sales proceeds in the same currency, eliminating the need for conversion or transaction fees.

In other words, customers can make payment as if they were dealing with a local entity, eliminating the need for excessive paperwork and bank charges- all the convenience of a local banking presence, without having to open an actual entity there. 

These currency accounts can be easily integrated with e-Commerce platforms like Amazon, eBay, Shopify and PayPal for online payments, and businesses can generate payment links for use in invoices, emails or SMS for customers. 

Companies can also create Airwallex Borderless Cards in minutes for free, providing employees with virtual Visa multi-currency cards for business expenses worldwide (physical cards can also be ordered). Expenses can be easily tracked and managed from a single dashboard in real-time, and cards draw directly from held balances in the Airwallex Global Account, ensuring you enjoy competitive exchange rates.

Card expenditure incurs no foreign transaction fees, and also earns an unlimited 1% cashback. Obviously as a miles collector my preference for personal spending is to use miles cards that can earn 4 mpd. But if I were running a business and every ounce of margin matters, I’m sure I’d appreciate the ability to save 1% on all corporate expenses, not to mention the absence of foreign currency fees on overseas spending.

Airwallex Borderless Cards don’t just offer pre-assigned limits, they also offer MCC controls that allow companies to ensure that cards are only used for approved expenditures. For example, a card issued to an employee for the purposes of travel expenses such as hotels or taxis could be blocked for all other purposes, like dining or shopping. I only wish that consumer cards had similar functionality, because that’s a great way of ensuring your transactions never stray off the bonus whitelist!

Airwallex cards can be issued in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, USA, UK, Canada, European Economic Area (EEA) region or 37 other markets. I have encountered situations where certain USA e-Commerce sites don’t accept my Singapore-issued cards, so the ability to generate an international card can come in very useful.

Airwallex also supports integration with popular eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce, allowing businesses to offer local payment methods with no coding knowledge necessary. 

Employees can use the Airwallex mobile app to upload receipts and submit expenses on the go, giving management real-time visibility of spend. The system allows for multi-layer approval workflows, and syncing with the company’s accounting software with automated expense categorisation. 

Airwallex offers seamless integration with popular accounting software such as Xero, Quick books and Netsuite, which automates the bookkeeping process and saves businesses from having to perform manual reconciliations. 

Airwallex serves over 100,000 businesses worldwide including Qantas, Shein and Afterpay, processing over US$60 billion in global payments annually. 

Airwallex welcome offer: Up to 30,000 Max Miles

30,000 miles welcome offer

MileLion readers can enjoy a special Airwallex welcome offer of up to 30,000 Max Miles, broken down as follows:

20,000 Max Miles will be awarded for successfully opening an Airwallex business account, a straightforward task which can be completed in 3-5 working days.

There are no fees involved in opening or maintaining an Airwallex business account, so think of this as an invitation to play around and experiment with all the features the account has to help your business grow. 

You’ll be further rewarded with 10,000 Max Miles when you start making transactions with your Airwallex business account, such as foreign exchange conversions, payment acceptance and card payments. 

For example, converting S$10,000 into USD to fund payments on your Airwallex Borderless Card would unlock the 10,000 miles (and earn you 1% cashback on your spending when it happens).

Alternatively, you could simply choose to spend S$10,000 on your Airwallex Borderless Card (remember, there’s no exclusions except wallet top-ups like Grab or YouTrip).

This offer is valid from 28 May to 19 June 2024. A customer service representative will contact you for reward fulfillment, which will take place by 30 September 2024.

The terms and conditions of the welcome offer can be found here.

Max Miles can be transferred to more than 20 airline and hotel loyalty programmes at a 1:1 ratio, without any fees. 

I’ve written a detailed guide covering your Max Miles redemption options, which you can find below.

What’s the best use of Max Miles?

Conclusion

International payments and day-to-day financial processes can be painful- but they don’t have to be. An Airwallex business account offers all the tools you need in one convenient dashboard, together with competitive FX rates, the ability to create local bank accounts in minutes, and instant corporate card issuance for all employees.

What’s more, Airwallex is offering 20,000 Max Miles just for creating a free account and exploring all it has to offer, with a further 10,000 Max Miles bonus when you start transacting with your account.

If you’re an SME owner, it’s something you’ll certainly want to take for a spin.