Bird taps Airwallex to Streamline Global Payments Operations

Amsterdam-based Bird, a communications platform specialising in API-driven customer relationship management (CRM), has partnered with Airwallex to manage its global payments operations. This move addresses Bird’s challenge of handling multiple currencies across its various entities and allows the company to streamline its fragmented operating system.

Founded in 2011 and previously known as MessageBird, Bird provides businesses with CRM solutions for marketing, sales, and payments. The company claims to process over 5 trillion messages annually across e-mail, SMS, and WhatsApp. Despite its success, Bird faced significant issues with the creation and approval of supplier payments and their reconciliation with its accounting software. The legacy systems couldn’t keep up with the demands of handling multiple currencies, leading to inefficiencies in its financial operations.

The new partnership with Airwallex aims to address these issues by providing Bird’s finance team with a more consistent and faster reconciliation process. Airwallex’s global payments and financial infrastructure will also power Bird’s in-house foreign exchange engine and issuing solution. This collaboration has already shown promising results, helping Bird consolidate its financial operations across different currencies and entities into a single platform.

Robert Vis, founder and CEO of Bird, indicated that the company is exploring additional opportunities to leverage the Airwallex product. The successful partnership has enabled Bird to focus on its core business operations without the burden of managing complex financial systems.

Airwallex, founded in Melbourne, Australia in 2015 and now headquartered in Singapore, offers a range of treasury and spend management products, along with embedded finance and payments solutions. The fintech’s international expansion continued last year with the acquisition of Mexican paytech MexPago, marking its entry into Latin America.

The partnership between Bird and Airwallex signifies a growing trend of companies seeking robust global payment solutions to manage their international operations. As Bird explores future opportunities with Airwallex, this collaboration could serve as a model for other companies looking to optimise their financial processes.