Determined to go global from day one, Australian luggage brand July tapped into Airwallex’s financial services to power its sky-high growth.

Bursting onto the scene in 2019 and weathering the COVID-19 storm, July has been achieving explosive growth year-on-year – experiencing a 640 per cent revenue increase in 2022 alone.

But as international expansion across the US, Europe and Asia powered growth, managing multiple currencies became increasingly expensive and time-consuming, according to July’s CEO and co-founder Richard Li.

“We were collecting revenues in Australian and US dollars, along with British pounds and others,” Li says.

“At the same time, we were paying dozens of suppliers in different countries across China and South-East Asia.

“Traditional cross-border banking was very cumbersome, with high foreign exchange margins, slow settlements and a lot of manual processes that required constantly jumping between bank accounts.”

The challenges are quickly recognised by BDO national digital leader Nick Kervin who warns that outdated systems designed for one currency risk dragging down businesses that are competing internationally.

“Many IT systems are designed with just a single currency in mind, adding unnecessary overhead to businesses trading across the globe,” Kervin says.

“Contemporary digital systems should make global trade seamless and simplify doing business across geographies.”

These challenges were exacerbated by the fact that e-commerce platforms such as Shopify immediately converted incoming international payments to Australian dollars, forcing July to go through a second round of foreign exchange when paying overseas suppliers in their own currencies.

Turning to global financial technology provider Airwallex not only offered July more competitive foreign exchange fees, but also the flexibility of a multi-currency wallet.

This significantly reduced foreign exchange costs by allowing incoming payments to remain in their original currency until needed to pay expenses or regional sales tax.

Meanwhile, Airwallex’s Pay By Link tool made it easy to expand into new digital channels, allowing July to create secure, shareable links to accept online payments without needing a website or a traditional e-commerce platform.

Airwallex’s extensive international financial network also makes it easy for July to establish overseas business bank accounts, all managed from within a single platform.

“When I first tried to create a UK bank account for the business, the bank in London said I needed to apply in person and provide proof of UK residency,” Li says.

“It seemed like an impossible hurdle for an Australian business looking to expand.

“Thanks to Airwallex’s team, expanding into new markets is easy. They can easily open bank accounts for us in new countries, while keeping everything tightly integrated through the Airwallex platform so things don’t become more complicated.”

Beyond streamlining global accounts payable and receivable, Airwallex’s employee expense management allows July to instantly issue employee debit and credit cards for managing expense management across multiple currencies.

“Traditionally, expense management involved expecting employees to spend their own money when travelling, after which they have to scrape together all their receipts and go through a complex reimbursement process,” Li says.

“With Airwallex, we simply issue them with a digital card which they can add to the wallet on their smartphone, which makes expenses easy to track and reconcile across the world – it’s just another example of how Airwallex takes the pain out of going global.”