Oxygen Advisors design smarter finance stacks for startups with Airwallex at the core

Oxygen Advisors is an outsourced finance team for startups and scale-ups, giving high-growth tech companies a full finance function before they can afford to build it in-house.

Initially founded to help friends raise capital, Oxygen now supports founders and operators across New Zealand’s tech ecosystem with board reporting, capital raises, pricing and packaging, billing system design, and everything in between.

Central to their philosophy is a simple belief: tech is the future of New Zealand – and getting financial infrastructure right early is one of the highest-leverage things a startup can do.

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Making global operations simple enough to scale

Oxygen’s clients tend to expand into multiple entities, currencies, and markets far earlier than a traditional business would. That creates genuine complexity: centralised finance functions, decentralised teams, and money constantly moving between countries.

Mike Mandis

Founder, Oxygen Advisors

For a lot of our companies, they’re international in multiple markets with different needs and decentralised teams. You need to bring all the finance functions into one place and do all of that in one go.

Goodbye to “Frankenstein” finance

Before partnering with Airwallex, Oxygen would frequently inherit a chaotic assortment of tools whenever they onboarded a new client. These nightmare tech stacks typically consisted of neobanks and overseas institutions cobbled together across different markets, alongside international transfer tools that were being used as de facto bank accounts. 

Clients often balanced these with separate expense-claim software, various card platforms, and traditional banks to handle credit cards and payroll in specific countries. 

“Traditional banking is slow and admin-heavy,” reflects Mike. These products were fundamentally flawed for professional use because they were B2C tools repurposed for B2B finance. They were never designed to handle multi-entity businesses, particularly those with global operations.

This structural mismatch could lead to serious operational failures, such as providers changing bank account numbers and notifying the wrong person, which risks customers unknowingly depositing funds into defunct accounts.

Administrative hurdles and poor customer service could further complicate the situation. Securing employee cards through traditional banks demanded extensive paperwork and direct involvement from directors, which significantly delayed essential business activities.

When systems inevitably broke, support from these large providers was often non-existent, leaving users with no one to contact for help. 

Reimagining the tech stack for success

Airwallex is now a core part of the go-to finance stack Oxygen sets up for their clients.

Airwallex tools were created to see founders through from day one to big business. From the beginning, clients can instantly pick up Global Accounts, Corporate Cards and Expense Management, and FX and Transfers to hit the ground running. All of this lives in a clean interface and mobile app, with direct integrations into the accounting tools clients are already using.

This unification of tools has helped Mike’s clients avoid common financial roadblocks. Their formula is tried and tested;

• Use Airwallex for all financial transactions and global accounts

• Use Xero for accounting

• Use a dedicated accounts inbox so all bills live in one place

Mike Mandis

Founder, Oxygen Advisors

We always encourage startups to get their finance stack set up properly from day one. With Airwallex, we know those foundations are strong from the start, so we’re not having to untangle fragmented systems later. It sets businesses up to move faster and scale with confidence.

Tackling cross-border complexity

Because Oxygen’s clients almost always operate across multiple markets and currencies, they are often forced to manage a variety of banks in different countries, each governed by unique rules and requiring separate portals. 

Without a solution like Airwallex, this fragmentation makes it a constant struggle to move money between various entities and countries quickly enough to cover time-sensitive obligations like overseas payroll or urgent supplier invoices.

Mike Mandis

Founder, Oxygen Advisors

You’re trying to move money from one country to the next and it’s really hard and slow to do that. As CFOs, that’s a big challenge when you need to make a payroll on the same-day.

Managing global funds like a local

Using Airwallex, Oxygen can set up clients for streamlined cross-border finance. Global Accounts in key currencies empower clients to receive and hold funds exactly where they are needed, ensuring that moving money between entities is fast and predictable. For clients that need to pay international suppliers in advance to secure stock or services, this speed and visibility is crucial.

Oxygen also leverages Airwallex’s internal transfer capabilities to maintain consistent payroll funding, even in scenarios where the necessary cash is being held within a different business entity.

Jacqueline Rees

Head of Finance, Oxygen Advisors

We hold money in one entity but have payroll coming out of another. With Airwallex we can transfer the funds instantly, so we know payroll is going to come out quickly.

Exceptional expense processes

In a typical startup, everyone needs to spend – from founders and sales to marketing, product and ops. 

Under traditional setups Oxygen saw their clients have difficulty issuing employee cards, with founders having to navigate paper-heavy applications at big banks, or teams relying on personal cards and reimbursements, creating friction and messy month-ends. This complexity would then double down when engaging with employees and services abroad.

Oxygen now leans on Airwallex Corporate Cards and Expense Management to clean this up for both sides. This system allows clients to issue cards quickly to staff without the typical delays of a bank. And because transactions are instantly visible within Airwallex platform, Oxygen maintains a clear view of spending by tracking who spent what and where against specific budget lines. 

Finally, the tight integration with Xero enables the Oxygen team to handle reconciliation and reporting efficiently, eliminating the need for tedious manual workarounds.

Jacqueline Rees

Head of Finance, Oxygen Advisors

We don’t like to pester clients on the daily. With Airwallex we can see who spent what, what they’ve spent it on and track budgets, then push it straight through to Xero. It really helps reduce the back and forth and keeps things streamlined.

Helping big Kiwi ideas take on the world

By adopting Airwallex for themselves and their clients, Oxygen Advisors are helping the next generation of NZ startups get started on the right financial foot.

They have replaced fragmented, B2C-style finance stacks with one global platform, made it faster and easier to move funds between markets, cover payroll and pay international suppliers, and have given founders and finance teams real-time visibility over spend. In the process, they have saved their own team hours every week on manual admin. 

Mike Mandis

Founder, Oxygen Advisors

With Airwallex everything is in one place. It’s a much faster, more modern way of operating, which is why we consistently use it with our clients.

Disclaimer: The information contained herein is factual information only and is not intended to imply any recommendation or opinion about a financial product.