ZENXIN Organic cuts cross-border payment times by 60% with Airwallex

Introducing ZENXIN Organic

ZENXIN Organic started with a chicken farm and a compost heap. Today, it's Singapore's leading organic produce brand, with its own farms in Malaysia and China, and a network of growers across the region. The company supplies major supermarket chains like FairPrice and Cold Storage in Singapore, and sells directly to consumers through its own retail stores and online storefront.

Owning the supply chain from soil to shelf gives ZENXIN a competitive advantage. But it also means cash moves in multiple directions at once. Overseas suppliers need to be paid before goods can move, while supermarkets typically only pay 30–60 days after delivery. With over 50 inventory cycles a year, every gap between cash in and cash out puts pressure on the next restock.

For a business trading in perishable goods on tight payment windows, those gaps strained supplier relationships and made cash flow difficult to manage. The team needed a real-time view of where every dollar sat to decide where to invest, when to expand, and how fast to scale.

The challenge

Slow cross-border payments that kept supply chains on hold 

For a wholesale business like ZENXIN, a delayed payment isn’t just a back-office problem, it’s a supply chain problem. 

Farmers won't harvest until they've been paid. Ports won't release shipments without proof of payment. Supermarket shelves can't wait for the bank to finish processing payments. 

For ZENXIN, paying overseas farms and suppliers meant visiting the bank, signing transfer forms, and losing margins to FX spreads and hidden fees on every transaction. Settlements took days, and the costs compounded across hundreds of payments a year.

Tai Seng Yee

Executive Director of ZENXIN Organic

"Farmers can't wait three days for your bank to finish processing a payment before deciding whether to harvest vegetables for you. It's such a short window when you're buying fresh produce. If you're not fast, someone else gets it."

Once funds left the bank, the team had no way to track them or confirm they’d landed, making it difficult to plan the next shipment with confidence. With payments sitting in separate systems from the rest of the business’s finances, the team couldn’t see ZENXIN’s true cash position at any given moment. 

Operational spend was invisible until month-end

The same problem was playing out within the business. Managers paid for daily business expenses out of pocket, from NETS cashcard top-ups to telco subscriptions and other ad hoc costs. Employees were regularly fronting thousands of dollars a month and waiting up to two weeks to be reimbursed.

Because every expense ran through personal cards and paper claims, the finance team had no visibility over company spend until month-end. They had to manually sort through receipts, print bank statements, and chase approvals just to work out where money had gone.

On one side, the team didn't know when supplier payments had landed. On the other, they didn't know what the business had spent until the month closed. These blind spots made it hard for ZENXIN to get a complete picture of cash flow across the business and make strategic decisions.

The solution

Real-time cash flow management across payments and spend

To keep its supply chain moving, ZENXIN needs real-time visibility over every dollar moving through the business. Airwallex brought its supplier payouts and operational spend onto a single platform, replacing the fragmented finance systems that left the team working from an incomplete picture of cash flow. 

International payments now run through one dashboard. Executive Director of ZENXIN Organic, Seng Yee, can approve transfers from his phone in under a minute, from anywhere in the world. Supplier payments that once took days now settle within hours and at a fraction of the cost, thanks to Airwallex's local payment rails in over 120 countries, which bypass the fees and delays of traditional banking. 

Round-the-clock access to interbank FX rates means ZENXIN locks in competitive rates on every transfer, instead of being tied to bank-quoted rates.

As soon as a transfer clears, the team can share confirmation of payment directly with the supplier, speeding up production, packaging, and shipment flows. Every payment is traceable from the moment it's sent to the moment it lands, so the team can plan its next move against an accurate picture of cash flow. 

Tai Seng Yee

Executive Director of ZENXIN Organic

“It's the same as our organic vegetables – every pack comes with a QR code so you can trace who grew it and when it was packed. Airwallex gives us the same confidence. Every payment we make is traceable, right there on your phone.”

Bringing operational spend onto Airwallex closed the final gap in the cash flow picture. ZENXIN now issues virtual cards to employees with built-in spend limits, replacing the personal credit cards and receipts that had kept company expenses invisible until month-end.

Every transaction runs through Airwallex AI for Spend, an automated expense engine that replaces manual expense tracking with intelligent categorisation. The finance team sees exactly where money is going the moment it moves, instead of waiting until month-end to piece it together.

With payments and spend unified on one dashboard, cash flow management is no longer a month-end reconstruction. It's a live picture that finance can monitor and act on in real time.

The result

By replacing fragmented finance systems with one connected platform, ZENXIN’s finance team gained real-time visibility over cash flow for the first time – and the results showed up across every part of the business: 

• Cross-border payments are up to 60% faster, with transfers now settling in hours instead of 2–5 working days.

• Supplier payment delays are down by over 50%, with confirmations that used to take up to three days now secured in hours.

• International transfer fees are up to 40% lower, helping ZENXIN protect its margins with every supplier payment. 

• Employee reimbursements are up to 50% faster, driven by employee cards with built-in spend limits and automated expense categorisation. 

Tai Seng Yee

Executive Director of ZENXIN Organic

"When your accountants aren't buried in paperwork, they can actually help you decide where to expand next. That's what excites me about where we're heading."

ZENXIN has since brought in-store payments onto the same platform through Airwallex Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals. Likewise, Airwallex’s Shopify integration will extend this same unified visibility to online payments. 

Once complete, every pay-in and payout will flow through one connected system. Customers will be able to pay with PayNow and other local payment methods, and ZENXIN expects to cut payment processing fees by up to 20%. With finance data all on one platform, the team also has the foundation it needs for AI to match transactions, flag anomalies, and surface patterns as they emerge. 

As ZENXIN sets its sights across Southeast Asia, a finance function built on live data and real-time control is ready to carry it forward, turning every dollar moving through the business into fuel for what comes next.

This publication does not constitute legal, tax, or professional advice from Airwallex, nor does it substitute seeking such advice, and makes no express or implied representations / warranties / guarantees regarding content accuracy, completeness, or currency. If you would like to request an update, feel free to contact us at [[email protected]]. Airwallex (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. (201626561Z) is licensed as a Major Payment Institution and regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.