Airwallex is a leading global payments and financial platform for modern businesses that has rapidly made a name for itself by empowering 100,000 businesses to collect, manage, spend, and send funds globally.

Compared to the “old world” of financial systems, Airwallex facilitates faster and cheaper global money transfers and payment processing, with a suite of services that rival established players like Stripe. As Airwallex continues to expand its geographic footprint, the company has focused on offering support for multiple currencies and expanding operations into new markets. 

“We knew that we wanted to build horizontally, to go into as many regions and countries as possible,” said Xijing Dai, Chief technology Officer at Airwallex.

However, these ambitious plans for global expansion came with significant obstacles, particularly in communication and regulatory compliance in different countries. 

In response, Airwallex has partnered with Bird to streamline and secure their communication channels as the company continues to scale across the world.

The problem: Overcoming SMS delivery challenges and operational inefficiencies

Airwallex lacked the ability to send SMS messages in certain countries, which created inconsistencies in service delivery and the user experience across different regions. 

Low SMS deliverability rates meant that customers requiring two-factor authentication (2FA) codes were often left frustrated. For example: “Our 2FA codes weren’t delivering fast enough to some of our customers, so they would expire, rendering them useless for those transactions,” added Dai.

Complicating matters further, each country's unique legal requirements for SMS communications presented compliance challenges, hindering Airwallex’s ability to maintain consistent service offerings as they entered new markets.

These persistent challenges began impacting the company’s operating principle of customer priority and led the team to seek a more stable and reliable communication solution.

The Solution: The ingredients needed for SMS success

When a major incident highlighted the limitations of their previous SMS provider, Airwallex realized they needed to find a better solution. And that’s when they heard about Bird.

Here’s what they were looking for in a new vendor:

• A smooth transition to new APIs, supported by the vendor.

• Reliable and scalable SMS deliverability.

• Support in meeting international regulatory requirements for SMS.

• More proactive, responsive back-and-forth communication when issues arose.

• Flexible offerings to meet various operational needs.

• A competitive advantage, offering overall better service than their competitors. 

Throughout the migration process, Bird’s team worked with Airwallex’s engineering team to handle all the technical requirements and implement new features rapidly and efficiently.

“Bird helped us a lot with onboarding,” said the technical lead at Airwallex. “We used to have to send in a lengthy form for each country. But now, Bird takes care of most of the process for us.”

The Results: Painless, speedy SMS onboarding into 30 new countries

One of the most significant impacts of Airwallex's partnership with Bird has been the substantial improvement in the SMS onboarding process for new countries. Previously, expanding SMS services into new markets was a cumbersome and slow process. Each country required filling out extensive forms and engaging in prolonged back-and-forth communications with vendors, a process that could stretch over a month or longer, delaying critical market entries and impacting service consistency.

With Bird’s expertise and streamlined processes to navigate compliance concerns, Airwallex was able to cut down their international SMS onboarding time significantly. The onboarding period was reduced from a month or more to an average of about 7 days. As a result, Airwallex was able to expand into 30 new countries in 2 months, a dramatic decrease in time-to-market.

Airwallex’s partnership with Bird has equipped the company with the tools to be more nimble, transforming what was once a month-long drag into a swift and smooth global expansion process.

In addition, thanks to Bird, Airwallex increased its main KPI, SMS deliverability, from 89.6% to 94.4%. This has made Airwallex’s financial services more reliable and dependable for their hundreds of thousands of customers.

Up next: Springboarding to automation and efficiency 

Solving for SMS was just the beginning. Airwallex intends to deepen its partnership with Bird by looking into the well-integrated systems that Bird offers. 

“We're on board with exploring more of Bird’s systems,” said Dai. “Our Operations team is working with Bird to use Bird Flows, and we’re hoping that brings a lot of automation and simplification to our processes, internally and for our customers.”

About Bird

Bird is an AI-first CRM for marketing, services, and payments. 

Our mission is to create a world where communicating with a business is as easy as talking with a friend. We power communication between businesses and their customers — across any channel, always with the right context, and on every corner of the planet. If you’ve ever ordered takeaway, returned a package, contacted customer service, or requested a login code, it’s almost guaranteed your interactions have been powered by Bird’s technology.

Our platform, our applications and our APIs help businesses streamline conversations through their customers’ preferred channels — like WhatsApp, Email, SMS, Voice, WeChat, Messenger, Instagram - and build powerful and engaging experiences. Bird's out of the box functionality and omnichannel expertise tips the scales for knowledge workers and helps them be productive right away, with tools to build great marketing campaigns, customer service experiences, or automated business processes.

Headquartered in Amsterdam, Bird processes over 6.5 trillion interactions for 50,000+ customers, including Google, Facebook, and Uber. 

About Airwallex

Airwallex is a leading global financial platform for modern businesses, offering trusted solutions to manage everything from 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.