Bird taps Airwallex to power international payments operations
Bird, a communications platform based in Amsterdam built to enable companies to message their customers on their preferred channels, has selected Airwallex to power its global payments operations.
Bird partners Airwallex for payments infrastructure upgrade
Founded in 2011 and previously known as MessageBird, Bird equips businesses with API-driven customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for marketing, sales, and payments and currently claims to facilitate over 5 trillion annual messages across e-mail, SMS, and WhatsApp.
The Dutch firm, which recently put a call out for potential acquisitions, says that it partnered with Airwallex as its legacy systems were unable to effectively manage the influx and outflow of multiple currencies across its various operating entities, resulting in a “fragmented operating system”.
In particular, the company states it faced several issues concerning the “creation and approval of supplier payments and reconciliation with Bird’s accounting software”.
Through their new partnership, the two firms have been working together to provide Bird’s finance team with greater consistency, speed, and depth of reconciliation.
Moreover, Bird has selected Airwallex and its global payments and financial infrastructure to power its in-house foreign exchange engine and issuing solution.
The collaboration is claimed to have already proven successful, allowing Bird to “consolidate its financial operations” across various currencies and entities into a unified platform.
Moving forward, the companies are actively exploring future avenues of collaboration, with Robert Vis, founder and CEO of Bird, confirming: “We are continuing to explore more opportunities to leverage the Airwallex product.”
Established in Melbourne, Australia in 2015 and now headquartered in Singapore, Airwallex offers enterprises a suite of treasury and spend management products alongside embedded finance and payments solutions.
Last year, the fintech expanded into Latin America with the acquisition of Mexican paytech MexPago.
