A premium checkout for a premium product: Why Flash Pack chose Airwallex

Introducing Flash Pack

Since 2014, Flash Pack has been curating spectacular group trips around the globe, offering holidays to over 70 destinations worldwide. The travel company caters to solo travellers in their 30s and 40s by providing premium tours, which founders Radha Vyas and Lee Thompson identified as missing in the travel industry. 

Despite setbacks from the COVID-19 pandemic, Flash Pack has achieved triple-digit year-on-year growth and won multiple prestigious awards. Fuelled by this and a goal to reduce friction at the checkout and boost customer conversion, Flash Pack reached out to Airwallex to upgrade its payment operations. 

The Challenge

The travel industry is highly susceptible to geopolitical events, natural disasters, and currency fluctuations, which require a financial infrastructure that can quickly adapt to new norms. CFO Oliver Lee explains that Flash Pack has experienced its fair share of volatility: “A key event for Flash Pack was the COVID-19 pandemic,” begins Oliver. “This highlighted the need for greater agility and real-time financial management in the business.” 

However, it was the need for a more premium checkout experience – rather than a flexible and resilient global financial infrastructure – that initially led Flash Pack to Airwallex. 

Removing friction from the checkout

Flash Pack’s previous checkout solution pushed customers to an unbranded third-party checkout pop-up, which created unnecessary friction. This setup damaged customer trust in the brand, which affected conversions, as some customers abandoned their purchases at the pivotal moment. 

When paying in instalments, customers had to log into the Flash Pack site to complete their payments. This lack of convenience resulted in increased customer cancellations, so Flash Pack needed to act quickly. 

“The average basket size of our product is £3,000,” explains Oliver. “So these are considered purchases. Our checkout experience had to match this, so we needed a solution that instilled trust in our customers and offered a slick UX.”  

Each lost order had a significant impact on the company’s bottom line. What Flash Pack needed was a seamless, on-brand, and customer-focused checkout experience that would provide the level of service that customers expect from a premium product.   

Integrated and real-time treasury management 

The Flash Pack team also wanted to automate its financial operations more, streamlining processes and creating immediate insights to support other departments.

At the forefront of this was the need for a payments acceptance solution that could integrate with the company’s accounting platform, Xero. An upgraded solution would eliminate the time-consuming reconciliation process the finance team experienced.

Flash Pack also needed a more customer-focused solution for issuing refunds. Customers had to wait three or four days for a refund, which sometimes led to customer-initiated chargebacks. Refunds were often issued using a different exchange rate, leading to bank charges. 

While Oliver was initially drawn to Airwallex’s low-code, customisable checkout solution, he recognised the greater value of switching to Airwallex.

Oliver Lee

CFO at Flash Pack

“Flash Pack’s checkout needed a premium solution. The unbranded third-party pop-up did not reflect our brand, and the lack of automation created a lot of friction. We simply had to upgrade it with Airwallex.”

The Solution

Flash Pack’s strategic decision to switch to Airwallex has unlocked new opportunities to improve the customer experience, optimise business operations, and free up time and resources to focus on business growth. 

Premium checkout experience: Using Airwallex’s fully customisable checkout solution has enabled Flash Pack to tailor the UX and UI to its brand. Now, customers experience a seamless, premium, and on-brand checkout at the end of their buying journey, which has eliminated friction and strengthened trust.

Consolidated treasury management: Flash Pack’s accounting, reservations, and checkout systems are now all integrated through Airwallex. Reconciling all of Flash Pack’s payments used to take 30 minutes each day. Now, it takes only a minute, as Oliver explains: “Switching to Airwallex has been a great time-saver for our team,” he says.

Real-time refunds: With Airwallex, the travel company can now issue real-time refunds in the customer’s currency.

Improved payment options for customers: Flash Pack can now offer payment plans to customers. “With Airwallex, we can offer payment in instalments. Our customers love this,” says Oliver.

Like-for-like settlement: Switching to Airwallex means that incoming funds will be settled directly into Global Accounts in the same currency that its customers used to make the payment. Importantly, this eliminates the need for any unnecessary currency conversions.

Accounting integration: Airwallex’s Expense Management means that Oliver’s team can track all expenses in real-time, providing greater accountability for individual departments. “It also makes financial reporting far slicker, which enables us to make more agile decision-making,” Oliver adds.  

Fast technical support: The impact of switching to Airwallex has extended beyond data, with Oliver placing the strength of the partnership in Airwallex's prompt and flexible support.

Oliver Lee

CFO at Flash Pack

“We’ve been so impressed by the customer service we receive from Airwallex. We can contact them via Slack. They’re highly responsive to our queries, constantly working to improve their products, and take in our feedback on key features we’d like to see. That’s where Airwallex beats the competition.”

The Result

Flash Pack needed to eliminate checkout friction and replace it with a premium customer experience. But by partnering with Airwallex, the travel company not only transformed its customer buying experience but also found significant value in other Airwallex products. These have resulted in efficiency gains in multiple areas:  

• Airwallex’s built-in automation has freed up valuable time for Flash Pack’s Finance team. The time savings amount to over eight hours per week on reconciling payments alone. 

• With slicker payment processes, Flash Pack can now issue real-time refunds, reducing chargebacks initiated by customers who previously had to wait days for their refund.  

• Using Airwallex for payments collection has unlocked like-for-like settlement of funds, reducing Flash Pack's FX costs, and allowing them to invest more in growth-focused activities. 

Moving to Airwallex has unlocked greater capacity for Flash Pack’s finance team to act as business partners to the rest of the organisation. “Our partnership with Airwallex is a big win regarding human labour,” comments Oliver. “Combining more automated processes and access to real-time, insightful data is huge for us. We can make more informed strategic decisions to support the entire business.” 

Oliver Lee

CFO at Flash Pack

“We wanted a premium, frictionless checkout experience for customers. What we got from Airwallex was so much more.”