Travel Companies Are Losing Money to This | Cross Border Payment | Travel Tech Show | Ethan Kirkwood
Source: Our analysis of the creator's lived experience, based on what they said in this video.
Creator's Key Takeaways
This stops what we call the double conversion of having to sell back into GVP and then back out to USD to pay your suppliers.
The automation of setting up new vendors and just scanning invoices in and having that automatically kind of reconciled is just saving finance a load of time.
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About our Bacon Score methodologyYouTube Video Description↓
Travel And Tour World brings you an exclusive interview with Ethan Kirkwood from the Business Development team at Airwallex, recorded live at a major travel industry trade show. In this conversation, Ethan explains how Airwallex is helping travel companies solve one of the industry's biggest financial pain points — cross-border payments — while investing heavily in AI and automation to save finance teams valuable time. Key highlights from this interview: ✅ What Airwallex does — a global end-to-end finance platform covering global payment acceptance, payouts, spend and expense management, and treasury operations ✅ How travel companies avoid the "double conversion trap" by holding and paying out in the same currency, cutting unnecessary conversion costs and commission fees ✅ Why Airwallex raised $330 million in its latest funding round to power AI and automation across spend, expense, and treasury management ✅ How local payment rails help businesses avoid the typical 3-5 day SWIFT delay, enabling same-day fund transfers ✅ How automation — from invoice scanning to vendor reconciliation — is saving finance teams significant time, especially for bespoke and high-net-worth travel packages with complex, multi-vendor payment structures ✅ How this extra time allows travel businesses to focus on strategic growth, such as expanding into new markets like Thailand and Mexico ✅ Real feedback from the show floor, with the majority of conversations coming from existing customers who highlight the value of consolidating their entire payment stack ✅ A look at Airwallex's 10-year anniversary milestone, celebrated as "Airwallex X10" This interview offers valuable insight for travel companies, tour operators, finance teams, and industry professionals looking to understand how fintech innovation is reshaping global payments and financial operations in the travel sector. 🎙️ Interviewee: Ethan Kirkwood, Business Development, Airwallex About Travel And Tour World: Travel And Tour World is a global travel media platform covering travel, tourism, hospitality, aviation, MICE, cruise, and luxury travel, with readership across 195 countries. [Airwallex, Airwallex travel industry, Ethan Kirkwood Airwallex, Airwallex X10, cross border payment solutions, currency conversion for business, double conversion trap, global business payments, spend and expense management, treasury management software, AI in finance automation, business travel payments, multi currency wallet, local payment rails vs SWIFT, invoice automation software, fintech for travel companies, tour operator finance software, travel fintech 2026] #Airwallex #TravelFintech #CrossBorderPayments #BusinessTravel #TravelIndustry #FinanceAutomation #AIinFinance #TravelAndTourWorld #TravelTechnology #GlobalPayments #TourOperators #MICE #TravelTrends2026