ClearBank, the enabler of real-time clearing and embedded banking, recently announced its partnership with Airwallex. A leading global Digital Payments and…

ClearBank, the enabler of real-time clearing and embedded banking, recently announced its partnership with Airwallex. A leading global Digital Payments and financial platform for modern businesses. Through this collaboration, Airwallex will leverage ClearBank’s agency banking solution to enhance its UK offering with virtual business accounts, GBP collections, and Confirmation of Payee (CoP) functionality.

Partnering for Digital Payments with ClearBank

ClearBank has enabled the global FinTech to issue virtual accounts and IBANs under its own brand identity. This reinforces Airwallex’s robust financial platform, while also allowing the company to maintain seamless customer branding. Moreover, through the partnership, Airwallex will have access to UK payment schemes. These include Faster Payments, BACS, and CHAPS. Accelerating Airwallex’s strategic goal of helping businesses simplify their global Digital Payments and financial operations, unlock new opportunities, and grow without limits.

“Our priority is to provide businesses with fast, flexible and seamless financial services. ClearBank’s agency banking solution aligns perfectly with our vision, allowing us to enhance our product offering in the UK while maintaining our brand identity. The team’s deep understanding of our business needs and their speed of execution have been invaluable throughout the partnership development and integration process.”

Vivien Cheung, Head of Financial Partnerships – EMEA, Airwallex

The partnership is founded on the companies’ shared ambition to utilise innovative technology to bring streamlined financial services to more customers in new markets. Furthermore, it highlights a growing demand for innovative financial solutions that combine the flexibility of FinTech with the security of traditional banking. ClearBank’s cloud-based approach allows for efficient integration, enabling Airwallex to deliver the features and functionality businesses need to make Digital ayments faster and more cost-effective.

“We’re proud to partner with Airwallex as the business enters its next phase of growth. Our unique combination of innovation and security was essential in supporting the premium customer experience that Airwallex is looking to provide. We look forward to deepening our relationship with Airwallex as we explore further opportunities for collaboration.”

John Salter, Chief Customer Officer, ClearBank

About Airwallex 

Airwallex is a leading global financial platform for modern businesses, offering trusted solutions to manage everything from Digital Payments, treasury, and spend management to embedded finance. With our proprietary infrastructure, Airwallex takes the friction out of global payments and financial operations, empowering businesses of all sizes to unlock new opportunities and grow beyond borders. Proudly founded in Melbourne, Airwallex supports over 100,000 businesses globally and is trusted by brands such as Brex, Rippling, Navan, Qantas, SHEIN and many more. For more information, visit http://www.airwallex.com

About ClearBank 

ClearBank is a purpose-built, technology-enabled clearing bank. Through its banking licence and intelligent, robust technology solutions, ClearBank enables its partners to offer real-time payment and innovative banking services to their customers. For more information, visit www.clear.bank

  • Digital Payments

Simon Ellis, Head of Operations, EMEA at the global payment platform Airwallex, with his key FinTech predictions for 2025

This past year has truly solidified FinTech’s role as an indispensable part of the financial landscape. From the sleek banking apps that have become a daily staple for millions to the invisible financial infrastructure powering seamless payments… FinTech is no longer just a buzzword – it’s the new norm. It’s not just about innovative startups anymore. It’s about how traditional financial institutions are embracing and integrating these technologies to stay relevant and meet the evolving needs of their customers. In essence, FinTech has become synonymous with modern banking, driving continuous innovation and transformation across the entire industry.

But what’s next? 2025 promises to be transformational in many ways. Businesses are accepting AI as the reality of our future. Consumers are becoming more accustomed to flexibility and choice. And now more than ever, both seek agile and seamless solutions for their financial needs.

Here are the trends we at Airwallex expect to see play out over the next twelve months:

Coopetition with traditional banks and FinTechs

Coopetition will become a firm reality in 2025. Many of the conventional fears associated with FinTechs will no longer be a salient presence. Increased collaboration between FinTechs and banks will facilitate further innovation on a mass scale. These giants will insert themselves into new industries and access a new generation of customers. The prerequisite for this is the correct compliance and controls but firms are committed to getting this right to ensure they maintain the right to operate.

A path to Hyper-Personalisation

Over the past year, we’ve witnessed the emergence of an increasingly educated payments buyer, mindful of what they need today and into the future as they scale. In 2025, we’ll see payment providers take more direction from their customers. Payment providers will need to be more flexible as merchant customer preferences shift.

For ambitious and progressive businesses, particularly those looking to operationalise in new markets at pace, convenience remains king. Navigating multiple vendors can quickly create friction. However, this is where FinTechs bundling their solutions comes into play. Having a single point of contact that provides a range of services – whether that’s foreign exchange (FX), multi-currency digital accounts, expense management or payouts – isn’t just about convenience. Moreover, it saves on crucial costs that can be reinvested back into the business to spur growth.

The days of taking a one-size-fits-all product approach will no longer suffice. Hyper-Personalisation will reign supreme as businesses fight for customer attention and brand loyalty.

The continued rise of Embedded Finance

In seeking to accommodate the growing need for flexibility, the year ahead will see Embedded Finance become more commonplace across a range of industries. Consumers have most likely all experienced the seamless process of making an embedded payment, whether it’s ordering through a food delivery app or paying for a ride. Usually, it’s through digital-first services, but 2025 will be the year that we see more traditional industries embrace embedded payments to keep pace with the broader innovation taking place in their sectors. This will also help businesses stand out in an ever-changing and overcrowded market. Embedded Finance will help end users maintain their dominance while also driving product stickiness.

AI is here to stay

To accelerate this transformation, 2025 will see FinTechs and banks persist in the use of AI to improve decision-making and customer engagement. AI is already being used to automate and expedite previously long and complex processes. For example, Generative AI (GenAI) will continue to help financial institutions enhance the speed and efficacy of know-your-customer (KYC) and customer onboarding processes. Furthermore, at the same time, it will detect unusual activity and fraud. We’ll also continue to see a focus on AI’s use to improve the ongoing customer experience with personalised insights and advice.

As a result, modern financial services will become more accessible to businesses of all sizes and across sectors. Allowing for easier and more cost-effective management of global operations.

  • Artificial Intelligence in FinTech
  • Digital Payments
  • Embedded Finance

FinTech Strategy spoke with Ryan O’Holleran, Head of Sales, Enterprise, EMEA at Airwallex, to learn about the global payments and financial infrastructure provider

Airwallex, a financial infrastructure provider, offers a range of services. Including multicurrency accounts, payment acceptance card issuing, foreign exchange (FX) payouts, treasury and expense management. In addition to supporting small and medium-sized businesses, the company also provides APIs and a software layer for direct access to enterprise businesses. As well as an enterprise platform product called Scale. Airwallex has found success working across various industries. It works with the likes of Bird (formerly MessageBird) to handle global accounts and backend treasury, and partners with Qantas to offer financial tools for their business partners.

The company also enables faster and more efficient payments through its patchwork network of financial partnerships and licenses. Airwallex has experienced significant growth even during economic downturns. As of August this year, Airwallex globally processed transactions worth more than $100 billion annually and saw a 73 percent year-on-year increase. It is now focused on embedded finance solutions and global expansion.

At Money20/20 Europe, FinTech Strategy spoke with Airwallex’s Head of Sales, Enterprise, EMEA, Ryan O’Holleran, to find out more…

Tell us about the genesis of Airwallex?

“Our co-founder, Jack Zhang, started a coffee company in Melbourne, Australia, which is still around today, with a few friends from university. And while they were building out this coffee shop, they were buying beans from abroad, along with supplies and packaging. They found how hard it was to actually pay for services, send funds abroad and deal with multiple currencies. So, they saw an opportunity to help streamline the financial infrastructure for small businesses. That’s when Jack and his co-founders put Airwallex together and built out an initial SME’s use case to allow multicurrency accounts and FX payouts. Since then, the business has really expanded…

Today, Airwallex provides a set of APIs – we’re really providing financial infrastructure to move money globally. On those APIs, we also have a layer of software that we can offer direct access to enterprise businesses. The third part of this, which is kind of the new product over the last three years, is our enterprise platform product called Scale. Scale allows you to embed those financial services into a product as well as a platform or marketplace. So, you kind of think about it as a direct treasury product, APIs and a platform product.”

Tell us about your role at Airwallex?

“I’m originally from San Francisco, grew up in the Bay area, started in tech, did a couple of startups, and I actually got into payments via Stripe. I joined Stripe back when there were about 200 employees in San Francisco. Spent some time in Chicago and then moved to the UK initially with Stripe. I was there for about five and a half years, as we went from 200 staff to 6,000. At that point, I wanted to get back to something a little bit different. To help more cross-functioning with product and help scale businesses. The opportunity with Airwallex came along where I saw the company addressing many things my customers at Stripe were asking for.

So, the FX piece, mass payouts, treasury, all complimented what Stripe is doing with acquiring. Since I joined the team three years ago, we’ve been scaling across EMEA. We now have offices in London, Amsterdam, Vilnius and just last year launched our office in Tel Aviv to cover Israel. And we have teams in the Americas and APAC where Airwallex was founded.”

What are some of the key challenges financial institutions are facing that you can help them with? What problems are companies asking you to solve? In doing so, what are the challenges for Airwallex?

“We work in different areas. This is where I think we have differentiated the business and also where I see the industry moving. If you look back over the last five, 10 years, there was this approach where you had Stripe and all the major players coming in and saying, we can do things and we can do it really well and you only need to use us, you don’t need to use a patchwork of providers. I think that is starting to shift. You see this with orchestration layers like Primer or Gravy, allowing people to be agnostic on PSPs. And then you’re seeing people think about redundancy. So, the heads of payments we’re talking to this week are looking at two or three providers because they need redundancy or want to use the best provider in each region. They don’t want to be siloed.

Airwallex can be used in a segmented approach. So, if you just need us for payouts, you can do that. If you just need us for FX, you can do that. If you just need us for acquiring, you can do that. Or we could do that globally and you can adjust as you see fit. So, the flexibility of Airwallex I think is one of our superpowers.”

Tell us about some of the successful partnerships Airwallex has been involved in…

“The interesting thing about Airwallex is that since we’re providing financial infrastructure, there’s a huge variety of customers we work with. One of the local ones is Bird (a cloud communications platform that connects enterprises to their global customers). Using our software product they are creating global accounts, handling backend treasury, payroll, suppliers and more. We’ve also worked with Qantas to build out an SMB solution embedding all of the Airwallex financial services and they call it Qantas Business Money.          

Elsewhere, Brex in the US were looking for a provider to help with their payout rails. One of the things Airwallex has done is rebuilt the Swift network via local rails. So, we have a patchwork network of financial partnerships and licences where if you are located, let’s say in the US, but you want to pay somebody out in the UK, you get access to faster payment rails having never set foot in the UK or separate rails via Europe having never set foot in the EU. So, you get this mass payoff solution of local rails, which is faster, cheaper, and more efficient than using something like Swift.”

“I think where we’re seeing a lot of opportunities, in EMEA specifically, in B2B, vertical, SaaS, travel and marketplaces, is this embedded finance solution. It was kind of a buzzword a few years ago and now we’re actually starting to see it develop. I view it as actually embedding all of these financial services – whether it be a wallet, issued cards, or local multi-currency accounts – and being able to monetize that. So, we’re seeing this with a lot of our customers actually wanting to white label our products, embed that and bring payments on platform.”

And what’s next for Airwallex? What future launches and initiatives are you particularly excited about?

“The growth of Airwallex, specifically on a global scale, over the last few years is one thing I’m very proud of because it’s happened during one of the worst economic downturns we’ve experienced. FinTech was almost retracting in terms of budgets and investments. You’re starting to see the tide turn, but we were able to grow over 100 percent year on year, through some of the toughest times for business. And now we’re really starting to see that pick up because the businesses, who actually decided this is going to be a building year for us now, they’re going live, they’re accelerating, they’re growing.

And so we’re seeing the ROI of that investment. It’s a testament to the global financial infrastructure we’ve built. Meanwhile, Airwallex became cash flow positive in 2023. It now processes more than $100 billion in annualised transaction volume. The company now employs over 1,500 people worldwide working across 23 international offices.”

Why Money20/20? What is it about this particular event that makes it the perfect place to showcase what you do? How has the response been to Airwallex?

“The great thing about Money20/20, here in Europe, and in Asia and the US, is the good division between buyers and sellers. So, you have all these service providers like Airwallex, Amex, etc… And then you have the Heads of Payments from companies like Booking.com, Vinted and SumUp who are coming here with their teams to meet with providers. If you think about that from a sales perspective, those meetings are very hard to get outside of this environment. But over a week you get 15 different meetings each day that would normally take months to arrange. So, the ROI from this week is really powerful just from being able to have these conversations. Three years ago, we first came to suss out the event and as we’ve grown the response has grown. People are being proactive and keen to engage with us which is exciting to see.”

  • Digital Payments
  • Embedded Finance