Choose your FX solution
Although FX risk is one of the major risks faced by global businesses, it is poorly managed given its complexities. To allow you to hedge against FX volatility, better manage FX risks and maximize profitability, Airwallex offers an extended spectrum of FX services integrated with our solutions that are easily customisable to suit your requirements. You have the flexibility to use an FX solution of your choice - Airwallex's MarketFX or LockFX solution. Use this information to determine the right FX solution for your business needs.
| MarketFX | LockFX | |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Allows you to create conversions from one currency to another at the prevailing market rate via Airwallex's panel of global liquidity providers. MarketFX pricing is provided 24 hours a day, every day of the year to ensure customers are always able to transact when they need to. | Allows you to lock in a guaranteed rate prior to conversion creation, ensuring stability in pricing prior to transaction confirmation |
| Suited for | Highly transactional customers who need to be booking many transactions in a short period at the best possible rate at the point of conversion. | Customers who want to remove any risk of the FX price fluctuating between the time the business conducts a transaction with one of their own customers and the time at which they convert that revenue to repatriate revenue back to their home domicile. You can also use this solution in workflows with manual interventions, such as 2-step approvals on large transactions. |
| Typical business type | Marketplace platforms, business payrolls | Online Travel Agencies, Wealthtech Platforms |
| Account config | Requires your account to be enabled for MarketFX. | Requires your account to be enabled for LockFX. |
| Transaction flow | You can optionally retrieve an indicative market rate before booking the conversion. | You must obtain a price quote before booking the conversion. |
| Validity period | Not applicable. Rate is determined by market conditions. | Applicable. The price returned on the price quote will be guaranteed for the validity period requested, regardless of ongoing market price movements. This validity period can be anywhere from 1 minute to 24 hours and quotes can either be single use or multi use. |
| Conversion settlement | You can specify a conversion date else the default based on your funding mode will be used. | You can specify a conversion date within or outside of the quote validity period else the default based on your funding mode will be used. |
| FX pricing | Takes into account a wide variety of factors which may include, but not limited to, current market volatility, available liquidity in the market, the size of the transaction and the selected date you wish to settle the transaction. Any additional agreed margin will be applied on top of the price produced by Airwallex's MarketFX pricing engine. | Depends on the validity period of the requested quote, and whether the quote requested is valid for MULTI_USE or SINGLE_USE |
| Integration effort | Simpler integration than LockFX, with no additional need to retrieve and manage quotes. | Requires your integration to retrieve and manage quotes in addition to the conversion flow with LockFX variants. |
Regardless of the FX solution, your account will be set to pre-funding mode by default, so you need to ensure that you have sufficient funds in your Airwallex Wallet before making a conversion. You can check your Wallet balance using Get current balances API. In the post-funding mode, you can make trades up to your open position limit without sufficient balance. For more information on funding modes, see Funding and Settlement models.