Airwallex vs Stripe Australia: Fees & features for business

When it comes to managing online payments, Australian businesses have plenty of options to choose from, but two names regularly crop up: Airwallex vs Stripe. Both of these platforms offer powerful tools to help businesses get paid and move money globally, but they’re designed with slightly different goals.

This guide breaks down exactly how Airwallex and Stripe compare (and differ) on features, pricing, fees, and who they’re designed for.

What is Airwallex?

Airwallex is an Australian-founded financial services platform that helps businesses send, receive, and manage money globally from a single hub. It offers a suite of products designed to smooth cross-border operations and reduce the friction (and cost) of moving money internationally.

If you do business overseas, you might find value in Airwallex’s multi-currency accounts, corporate cards, global payment tools and billing management features.

While the main focus is on lowering the cost of sending and receiving money overseas, Airwallex does offer a payment gateway you can embed directly into your website, allowing you to accept online payments in multiple currencies.

Airwallex has five main product pillars: Business Accounts, Spend, Payments, Billing, and Platform APIs and Embedded Finance¹.

Here are some of the key features:

• Multi-currency accounts - Open everyday transaction accounts and receive money with local account details in 20+ currencies, including AUD, NZD, USD, and EUR².
• Global payments - Send money to 200+ countries in 60+ currencies at very competitive rates, often cheaper than traditional banks³.
• Borderless cards - Issue physical and virtual Visa cards for team spending with built-in expense tracking and role-based access controls⁴. Airwallex is also planning to launch a credit card in the near future.
• Payment processing - Accept card and wallet payments online with simple ‘low-code’ checkout options⁵. Or customise the experience using Airwallex’s library of API and plugins for platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce.
• Billing - Create and automate invoices across multiple currencies, with tools for different types of billing and automatic payment collection to boost cash flow.
• Integrations - Sync Airwallex with accounting tools like QuickBooks and Xero⁶, as well as popular ecommerce and SaaS platforms.

Who is Airwallex for?

Airwallex is geared towards businesses that need to manage international payments and operations, such as e-commerce sites selling globally, travel companies, marketplaces, and software providers.

One of the main benefits is that you get business transaction accounts and corporate cards with checkout and payment plugins. This means it handles everything from facilitating payments to being settled in a multi-currency account, where you can hold and convert money at a time that’s convenient for you.

Managing money across borders is the headline attraction, though. For example, an Australian startup can use Airwallex to invoice a client in New Zealand in NZD, receive the payment, and then pay suppliers in other countries in their local currencies — all without getting stung by a string of high conversion fees.

What is Stripe?

Stripe is a US-based online payment processing platform. It’s an intermediary that makes it easy for businesses to take card and digital payments from customers, manage subscriptions, and build custom, secure checkout experiences using a suite of APIs.

Stripe markets itself as a financial infrastructure — the engine that processes customer payments, rather than a transaction account for everyday purchases. It’s built for online businesses that need to manage things like recurring billing, invoicing, tax automation, and more.

Stripe has four core product pillars: Payments, Money Management, and Revenue and Finance Automation⁷.

Here are some of the key features:

• Payment processing - Accept card and digital wallet payments from customers anywhere using 100+ payment methods, including Visa, American Express⁹, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, with support for 135+ currencies⁸.
• Checkout and invoicing - Create secure payment pages using Stripe Checkout, or fire off pre-built invoices with automatic payment reminders. Customers can pay with one click.
• Subscriptions and billing - Use Stripe Billing to automate recurring payments and handle usage-based billing¹⁰. Integrate checkout pages with subscription APIs to take and manage payments on websites, apps, and CRM systems.
• Point of sale - Take in-person card payments using Stripe Terminal readers¹¹.
• Fraud prevention - Stripe Radar uses machine learning across billions of transactions to detect and block fraudulent payments¹².
• Developer-friendly APIs - Build bespoke checkouts and payment solutions with Stripe’s vast library of APIs, or easily connect to ecommerce and SaaS platforms like Shopify and Salesforce.
• Tax automation - Stripe Tax takes care of global tax compliance by automatically identifying what you owe, calculating the right amounts, and supporting filings¹³.

Who is Stripe for?

Stripe is targeted at businesses and marketplaces with ecommerce stores or subscription services that need a high-quality payment processing platform.

Stripe’s a sort of ‘best-in-class’ for online checkouts. It’s very developer-friendly, but with lots of customisation options. There are a ton of APIs and software kits that let businesses custom-build pretty much everything, from subscription billing to marketplace payouts. If you have a team of developers in-house, you might value this flexibility.

However, it doesn’t provide any business banking, like day-to-day transactions or multi-currency accounts. We’ll explore these sorts of differences in depth in the next section.

Comparison between Airwallex and Stripe for Australian businesses

Now, let’s take a closer look at our Airwallex vs Stripe comparison. First, there’s a visual overview of the features they offer and how they differ, then a quick rundown of the solutions for business customers.

Airwallex vs Stripe: Feature comparison

Here is a side-by-side comparison of Stripe vs Airwallex features.

Airwallex for business customers

Airwallex tackles the operational challenges and costs of running a global business. Rather than juggling multiple accounts and payment processors, you can do everything in one platform. Airwallex lets you send money to 200+ countries at ‘bank-beating’ exchange rates and receive payments with a feature called ‘Global Accounts’, where you get local bank and branch codes.

Stripe for business customers

Stripe makes it easier to accept payments online. What can be quite a chore to handle manually: things like building secure checkout flows, handling different card types, and managing subscriptions can all be done seamlessly. It’s also built to handle vast volumes of transactions with minimal friction for customers. Any team with developers can dig into a massive resource of ‘documentation’ to build and integrate Stripe into websites.

Airwallex vs Stripe: Fee comparison

As we’ve seen, Airwallex and Stripe have a vast number of features and tools for processing payments, but both charge fees on domestic and international transactions. Understanding the fee structures for each platform will give you a better idea of which platform is value for the way your business operates.

Here’s an overview of the fees:

Airwallex vs Stripe: Pricing comparison

Airwallex and Stripe use different pricing models for their services. Airwallex has a familiar subscription-based model where you pay a set price per month, while Stripe uses pay-as-you-go, per-transaction pricing without any setup or monthly fees.

Let’s look at both in more detail.

Airwallex has three main business tiers: Explore, Grow, and Accelerate. You can get a free 1-month trial for both Explore and Grow if you fancy trialling some of the features before committing to a specific plan.

With Stripe, you just pay for things as you go, rather than up front per month. The pricing structure is very simple, too.

Stripe also uses on-demand pricing for pretty much all of its features, so you’ll pay $0.08 AUD per screened transaction for Radar fraud protection, and 0.4% per paid invoice²¹. With these ongoing fees, it’s easy for costs to quickly add up.

Wise Business: Alternative solution

When managing finances for an Australian business, keeping international transaction costs transparent is essential. Wise Business helps solve the challenge of managing global money by offering the mid-market exchange rate on conversions to protect your bottom line.

You can hold over 40+ currencies in a single account and use local account details to receive funds from markets like the US or UK just as a local business would. This flexibility supports your operations whether you are paying overseas suppliers or receiving revenue from abroad.

A Wise Business account allows users to can send, receive, and hold in multiple currencies. Experience hassle-free global transactions by transacting like a local business. Here's what you get with a Wise Business account:

• Free to register — Hold and convert between 40+ currencies. Send to 140+ countries
• Debit cards for you and your team, which you can use in 150+ countries
• Multi-user access for team members, with ways to control and manage permissions
• Pay up to 1,000 recipients at once with the Wise batch payments feature
• Integrate with your favourite cloud accounting solutions like Xero, QuickBooks, and more
• Get account details to receive in 8+ currencies for a one-time fee of 65 AUD

Sign up for the Wise Business account! 🚀

This general advice does not take into account your objectives, financial circumstances or needs and you should consider if it is appropriate for you.

Sources:

1. Airwallex Australia - Home page
2. Airwallex - Which currencies can I get a Global Account in and what payments can I receive?
3. Airwallex - Business account transfers
4. Airwallex - Spend management cards
5. Airwallex - Payments checkout
6. Airwallex - Integrations
7. Stripe Australia - Home Page
8. Stripe - Payments
9. Stripe - American Express
10. Stripe - Billing
11. Stripe - Terminal
12. Stripe - Radar
13. Stripe - Tax
14. Stripe - Multicurrency settlement
15. Airwallex - Supported currencies
16. Airwallex - Choose your payments solution
17. Airwallex - What is Airwallex’s real-time fraud protection
18. Airwallex - Integrations
19. Stripe - Accounting integrations
20. Airwallex - Pricing
21. Stripe - Pricing
22. Stripe - Local payment methods