How Ginger leads a successful digital transformation with Airwallex

Discover how Ginger uses Airwallex to better suit their needs for running an eCommerce-focused brand.

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Ginger logo

99%

saved in overseas payments transaction fees

90%

time saved in expense management hours

<48 hours

needed to successfully open an Airwallex global account

Founded in 2008, Ginger is a fashion brand that promotes Hong Kong designs through collaborating with different local creators.

Company size

10 - 20 employees

Location

Hong Kong

Industry

Fashion

Airwallex Products Used

Global Accounts
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Founded in 2008, Ginger is a fashion brand that promotes Hong Kong designs through collaborating with different local creators. When the pandemic hit, their founder Ken Ma took their brick-and-mortar business online to adapt to the changes in the retail industry. 

To accomplish the update in their business model, Ginger switched over from traditional banks to Airwallex to better suit their needs for running an eCommerce-focused brand. The whole process of opening their Airwallex business account took less than 48 hours, making it a truly seamless transition. 

Today, Ginger no longer relies on the services of traditional banks as Airwallex offers a one-stop platform for all their needs.

Challenge 1: Expensive foreign exchange rates and transaction fees when making overseas payments via traditional banks

As a homegrown brand that champions local talents, Ken works closely with many Hong Kong designers to create Ginger’s designs. In the last few months, a number of these designers have relocated overseas, which presents a royalty payment challenge for Ken as he needs to transfer money internationally to pay them.

In the past, Ken faced expensive foreign exchange rates and transaction fees when making overseas payments via traditional banks. He also found that there is a lack of transparency with many of these online banking platforms and that they are inconvenient and difficult to use.

Solution & Results: Airwallex helps minimise 99% of transaction fees for overseas payments

Using Airwallex transfers function, Ken can directly pay his overseas designers without having to go through the SWIFT network, saving up to 99% in international transaction fees.

Ken Ma

Founder of Ginger

“Since using Airwallex, we basically don’t have to use traditional banks anymore. From receiving and sending payments to expense management, Airwallex is our one-stop solution for accounting and finance."

Challenge 2: Ginger relied on a heavily manual process of expense management

Before using Airwallex, Ginger relied on a heavily manual process of expense management. For every single business expense they made – from placing printing orders on E-Print to sending off overseas deliveries at the post office and paying for social media ads – employees used their personal credit cards or asked Ken to pay for the spending. To get reimbursed for their business purchases, the team had to first download their card statements from the bank, and then export them to a spreadsheet at the end of each month for accounting purposes. Ken had to go through the submitted spreadsheet and pay each employee back – a time-consuming and inefficient process.

Solution & Results: Airwallex helps cut down 90% of time spent on expense management

By using Airwallex for handling and reporting their expenses, the Ginger team is able to free up valuable time from dealing with tedious expense claims to focus on growing the business. After creating an Airwallex business account for Ginger, Ken is able to immediately create Visa cards for his employees online and use the expense management functions.

Ken Ma

Founder of Ginger

“We applied for Airwallex Borderless cards right away and they helped us minimise 90% of time spent previously on tracking expenses and reimbursing employees.”

See how our customers are finding Airwallex

Airwallex Testimony

"Airwallex has been a game changer for all our banking needs. As a fast-growing startup, we need a scalable yet cost-efficient batch payment solution to pay our employees and vendors both inside and outside Hong Kong. Airwallex helps us save money on every bank transfer with their near-zero transaction fee and market-beating FX rates. We also use Airwallex’s multi-currency Visa cards for business travel expenses and SaaS subscriptions to avoid hidden bank fees that would otherwise have been difficult to spot. Would highly recommend other startups to get started with Airwallex!"

Henson Tsai

Founder, SleekFlow

Airwallex Testimony

"Importing the best wine and sake overseas always involve extra costs on transaction fee & FX fee. With Airwallex, we saved 100% of our overseas remittance cost and we could provide the best price for our customers."

Tomy Wu

Co-Founder, MyiCellar

Airwallex Testimony

"Airwallex is an innovative fintech platform with a first-class customer support team. They transformed the previously painful process of creating corporate cards and managing business accounts into something simple, convenient, and cost-effective. The onboarding was quick and smooth, the security features exceeded our expectations, and most importantly, it is really easy to use. Airwallex saves a lot of my team's time and the simplicity is genius."

Gavin Black

Interim CEO & Chief Financial Officer, PURE Group

Airwallex Testimony

"I’m so thankful that Airwallex exists! In Hong Kong, it's so hard to find financial service providers that are friendly to small businesses. Airwallex allows me to exchange currencies at really great rates, and the interface is very modern and easy to use compared to my bank. We save so much money with Airwallex! In just a few months, we've already saved more than HK$78,000 in unnecessary fees!"

Jennifer Chong

CEO, Linjer

Airwallex Testimony

"Airwallex provides us with flexibility and cost savings on our international fund flows. We are using Airwallex to pay international suppliers and are saving up to 90% on transaction fees and FX verses traditional banks - thanks to their competitive exchange rate and low transaction costs."

Kelvin Kan

Founder, Homemakase

Airwallex Testimony

"Airwallex has been great for our team - it makes payments and transfers so much easier, and has saved us significant amounts of time compared to what we were doing before with HSBC. Airwallex's platform is easy to use and very intuitive. Airwallex virtual card has solved most of our painpoints with sharing corporate card numbers and credit card limits. The best part is being able to save money on all our monthly bank transfers, and we've already saved thousands of dollars by using Airwallex. Airwallex's support has also been highly responsive to troubleshoot any issues in a timely manner."

Sarah Chang

Co-founder & COO, Forkast.News

Airwallex Testimony

"Airwallex offers both physical and virtual corporate cards tailored to the needs of different staff. Their virtual corporate card can even be set up in just 1 minute. Its features make expense management and approval processes notably easier for us."

Justin Chu

General Manager, K Dollar Program

Airwallex Testimony

"With Airwallex, we were able to start accepting local payments quickly. Because the user experience is intuitive and the checkout process faster, we’ve actually had a 50% increase in shoppers using local payment methods."

Rebekah

Business Development Director, Slowood

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