Airwallex vs Stripe

Overview

This being said, starting price points are cheaper with Stripe (1.50% vs 2.80% with Airwallex). Stripe also offers physical transaction support in the form of POS hardware.

Both companies offer payouts in multiple currencies. Currency conversion for unsupported currencies is more expensive on Stripe (from 2%) against Airwallex (from 0.5%).

Platform details

Any cross border solution should be considered within the context of your business. For this reason, we analysed each element of the both platforms.

Our choice of Airwallex as a winner overall is that we believe it to be a better all-round platform.

Payment gateway

As a payment gateway, Stripe is an industry leader and behind only PayPal with market share. But it isn’t without its flaws.

Lack of customer service is a common complaint from Stripe users, and a reason people turn to alternatives.

There’s also a lot of discussion online around frozen accounts and locked funds.

Being such a big company makes Stripe easier to use ‘out-of-the-box’. With this comes a huge user base and online community.

Airwallex is a multi-currency platform, which has evolved to offer payment gateways. This isn’t to say it is not a strong product, but it could mean more of a hands-on approach to set up as an example.

Price wise, Stripe has a stronger starting point at 1.50%. For international cards the cost is 3.25% and currency conversion (if needed) is 2%. So should a customer opt to use a combination of both that are not supported, the cost can be as high as 5.25%. This would be rare of course, but important to point out.

Airwallex and Stripe both have settlement timeframes of at least 7 days. This is not great on either side if you want to settle funds quickly. As a comparison, Zen offers immediate settlement and Sokin settlement timeframes are usually 1 business day.

As cross border payments (and settlements) become more common, we’d expect both companies to reduce this 7 day timeframe.

Other features

As mentioned, where Airwallex outshines Stripe is through the additional features on offer.

With Airwallex you get 12 local accounts. These can be used for accepting transactions, spending and storing funds. .

Stripe does offer local currency settlement in a different way. This will convert transactions into the base currency of your account at settlement. Currency conversion with Stripe is from 2%.

Airwallex comes with a nice range of integrations as well. These include account software, like Xero, or ecommerce CMS support. Along with Stripe, Airwallex supports payments through WooCommerce and Shopify.

Overall, ecommerce support is greater with Stripe. Anything not achievable as a native plugin with Airwallex can be built using the API.

One feature that Stripe has, which Airwallex does not, is physical payment support. Transactions within physical stores through Stripe cost 2.7% per transaction.

Making and receiving cross border payments

Sending money

With Airwallex it is possible to send money from your account as well. This could be for paying staff or suppliers.

This can be integrated with accounting software, and payments can come from local accounts. Working with existing local balances can save time and money on cross border transactions.

There’s also support for card payments from Airwallex. This is in the form of spending for expenses for example. Both physical and virtual cards are an option.

Airwallex offers a comprehensive expense management platform. This includes custom payment flows depending on the department or team. Central finance teams are then able to access everything.

Sending cross border payments is not supported on Stripe.

Receiving money

Platform and API

If you want to use Stripe or Airwallex based on an API, there’s plenty on offer from both.

Airwallex is our winner as the API reflects the overall product, so offers more than Stripe’s does.

If you specifically want to build a payment gateway, over using a full suite products, Stripe is one of the best options available.

API support (and communities) are extensive for both platforms. So, finding people who have overcome some of the common pitfalls in any setup (and solutions) can be simple.

Overview

Payments and foreign exchange

Experience and support

When onboarding and using cross border financial products, support is paramount.

Stripe has a lot of negative online reviews for support, with many customers saying they never receive a response. There is a strong online community however. It's often the case that many customers work together in forums to solve issues.

With Airwallex, you do get help with onboarding and there’s ongoing customer support as well. Although, there is no hands-on account management with Airwallex.

Choosing a winner

Use cases for Airwallex and GoCardless

Alternative options and comparisons

Find a platform by solution