Hayley Shaw from Airwallex

I recently had the privilege to strike a conversation with Hayley Shaw, a former Growth Relationship Manager at Airwallex a popular start-up unicorn which empowers employees with corporate cards, increasing savings on global expenses and easing forex transaction fees.

Here are some key insights from our conversation:

What was your role at Airwallex and how did it grow so rapidly?

Being a growth relationship manager at Airwallex, we take the hassle out of growing local businesses internationally. For further business development, we recently had Airwallex out on Wall Street in New York indicating the rapid popularity of this company among many corporate card holder users. We specifically concentrate on the ease of Forex transactions. We aid business operations by tapping into the FX market and have been commercial for the past 2 years, solidifying our banking products by setting up partnerships with 50 banks. We reduce the international fees of transactions drastically whilst enhancing our end-to-end user platform. For example, using credit cards to pay for the digital marketing or any technological subscriptions or fees to be paid – we make it easier for them by providing a payment gateway to businesses who aim for international exposure.

What are the interesting features of Airwallex? And what kind of financial products were you able to launch?

Once you jump into our Airwallex website, or “the wallet”, there are options for whether you are saving or converting funds. As a disruptor in the Fintech world, we aim to be the technology that connects the customers to these partnerships possessing those capabilities. The FX markup is quite low as compared to the other banks. There is more clarity and transparency that Airwallex provides, than any other banks do not. Moreover, we can collect funds on a global account having multiple currency accounts at one time. The objective is to offer minimum conversion rates to drive efficiencies with the least FX markup.

We also offer tech expenses and employee cards for SMEs which can be itemized to single dedicated expenses. Our UI is also very user-friendly and can be easily browsed. Since the online payments is fully evolving, we are driving energy towards making businesses grow with ease.

How does Airwallex stack up against other Competitors?

The base fee for Airwallex sits at 3.8% and it has no 1st or 2nd Conversion fee. Whilst, Stripe, Braintree and PayPal have 3.0%-4.0% Conversion fees.There is a multicurrency settlement and payment methods without any hassle of setting up local entities in the chosen countries.Customers can win back profits from the unnecessary conversion fees.There is a seamless integration into the Airwallex business platform with funds that are settled directly into your personal wallet to pay to the suppliers, staff or the software.We are also integrated with Xero for accounting purposes.

What was your background and how did you get into the Fintech industry? Also, what have you been upto during quarantine?

I studied Media and Communications and started pursuing my career in sales and out of home advertising. In the global pandemic, I have been constantly learning about billboards and thresholds, and its quite exciting to see start-ups such as Canva, AfterPay to be the rising unicorns of our generations. Moreover, recently there is a growing concentration of companies in Sydney and Melbourne, which is resulting in Australian hub. This draws back to my marketing role as you get a clear visual on the cycle of funds, generation of demands or to source their products from their businesses. So, at Airwallex, we focus on high growth strategy by empowering employees, cultivate ethical and professional determination. The work culture appreciates people with ethos, intellectual curiosity and who are not afraid to push the boundaries. My job role mainly consists more of prospecting, managing the onboarding, encouraging companies and people to sign up and doing activation calls.

Regarding entering the Fintech industry, I reached out straight to the CEO and within reason, curated my experience in a cover letter.

Apart from my work, I enjoy watching Netflix, relax at the beach and love going to the markets. I have been currently listening to the podcast – Curio whilst taking a walk around the block – it talks about the economists and Australian Financial Review newspaper articles.

Whilst Airwallex has seen immense growth trend over the past few months, we hope to witness more surprises, products, curious and impressive people like Hayley from Airwallex!

Thank you for reading!