Airwallex vs Wise Business: Two Different Ways to Charge You for FX

Most comparisons of these two put a percentage next to each name and declare a winner. That is not a comparison, because the two numbers do not measure the same thing. Wise and Airwallex charge for currency in structurally different ways, and until you understand the shapes you cannot say which is cheaper for you.

The two fee shapes

Airwallex prices as a markup on the rate. Its pricing page states "0.5% above interbank rates for major currencies" and "1% for all other currencies". You are quoted a rate that already contains the margin. There is nothing to add afterwards, and the cost is proportional to the amount, forever — 0.5% of a large transfer is a large number.

Wise prices as a clean rate plus a visible fee. Its business page says it uses "the mid-market rate without any mark-ups", and charges a separate conversion fee shown as its own line. Both figures read on 9 August 2026.

That difference has a practical consequence people miss: a markup is invisible and a fee is not. With a markup you cannot tell, from the rate alone, what you paid — you would have to look up the interbank rate at that moment and compare. With a separate fee you can read it off the transfer. Neither approach is dishonest; Airwallex publishes its markup plainly. But one is auditable at a glance and the other is not, and for a business that matters at reconciliation.

Which is actually cheaper

Honestly: it depends, and any article that tells you otherwise without knowing your currency pair is guessing.

The variables that decide it are the pair you convert, the size of each conversion, and how often you do it. Wise's conversion fee varies by route, so a corridor where its fee is low will beat a flat 0.5% markup, and a corridor where its fee is higher will not. Large one-off conversions and small frequent ones can land on opposite sides of the answer.

The correct method takes about ten minutes and beats every published comparison including this one:

1. Take a real transaction you actually make — the pair, the amount, the direction. 2. Get a live quote from each provider for that exact transaction. 3. Compare the amount that lands, not the rate and not the fee. The landed amount is the only figure that includes everything. 4. Repeat for your second most common transaction, because the answer can flip.

Do that once a year. Fintech pricing moves, and the winner from eighteen months ago is not evidence about today.

Why the shapes favour different businesses

The two structures are not just cosmetically different; they scale differently, and that is what makes one or the other fit your business.

A percentage markup is linear without limit. Convert ten times more and you pay ten times more, at exactly the same rate. That is predictable and easy to budget, and it is unattractive precisely when the amounts get large, because there is no point at which the proportional cost stops growing.

A clean rate plus a fee behaves differently depending on how the fee is composed. Where a conversion fee has any fixed component, small frequent conversions are penalised and large occasional ones are rewarded — the fixed part is spread over more money. Where the fee is purely proportional, it behaves like a markup with better disclosure.

The practical reading: a business converting a handful of large amounts should test both carefully, because that is the profile where the structures diverge most. A business converting small amounts constantly should look hard at any fixed element, and should also ask whether it needs to convert at all — holding the currency and spending from it avoids the question entirely, which is the argument in how to get paid in multiple currencies.

One more thing the percentages hide: both providers earn on the spread between what they pay for currency and what they charge you, and neither publishes that. The landed-amount test above is the only method that captures everything, which is why it beats any table of headline rates.

Where they differ beyond price

Account opening. Wise's UK business page quotes a "one-off 50 GBP set-up fee". Airwallex's UK pricing lists "£0" for its Explore tier, with "£49 /month" for Grow and Accelerate on custom pricing. A £50 one-off and a £0 tier are both trivial next to conversion costs at volume, so do not let this decide it.

Receiving currencies. Both publish local account details, and the specific lists differ. This is the practical reason some businesses hold both — the currency your largest client pays in may have local details at one and not the other. Which currencies you can actually be paid in explains why the local list matters far more than the headline count, and the same test applies to Wise.

Where the rails stop. Airwallex quotes SWIFT at "£10-20/ transfer (SHA and OUR)" on the UK page for routes with no local option. Check the equivalent fallback wherever you plan to send, because the fallback is where the surprises live.

Cards and controls. Both issue cards; neither is primarily a card-control platform. If issuing many controlled cards is a real requirement, that is a third product — see Wallester vs Airwallex.

The recommendation

For most cross-border small businesses the honest answer is that both are far better than a traditional bank, and the gap between them is smaller than the gap between either one and what you are probably doing now. If you are still converting through a high-street business account, switching to either will save you more than choosing perfectly between them.

If you want a default: run the ten-minute landed-amount test above on your two most common transactions. If they disagree, keep both accounts open — Airwallex has a free tier and Wise charges a modest one-off, so holding both costs almost nothing and lets you route each currency where it is cheapest.

Our Airwallex review covers plans and mechanism in full, and how to get paid in multiple currencies is the structural guide that sits above this comparison.