Sphere automates global tax remittance with Airwallex’s embedded financial infrastructure
Paying taxes across multiple countries creates unnecessary friction for global businesses. To improve the customer experience, Sphere built an automated, embedded tax payment workflow that leverages Airwallex’s global payout capabilities.
Sphere uses AI to make sense of global tax regulation so businesses can sell any product, anywhere in the world, while remaining fully compliant. In doing so, Sphere levels the playing field for startups competing with global incumbents and helps governments and local economies benefit more from international trade.
Industry
Fintech & financial services
Location
San Francisco, CA
Company size
11–50 employees
Airwallex Products Used
A tax platform built for a global economy
Sphere is an AI-powered tax compliance platform that helps software and AI companies manage global indirect tax – VAT, GST, and sales tax – no matter where they sell. Built with the world’s first AI-native tax engine, Sphere automatically ingests tax laws from around the world and applies the correct tax treatment to any product, in any jurisdiction, at scale.
For fast-growing companies expanding internationally, Sphere removes the heavy operational burden of tax compliance. As Sphere’s customer base grew, so did the pile-up of international tax payments, an increasingly painful workflow for finance teams managing account close, tax filings, and a cascade of manual wire transfers.
The challenge: tax payments became unsustainable
Before Airwallex, Sphere’s customers had to manually wire funds to dozens of local tax authorities across the globe. For finance teams already deep in close-period tasks, the process was overwhelming.
“Customers would finish their close, and suddenly they had 20 international wires to deal with,” said Nicholas Rudder, Founder and CEO of Sphere. “It’s not something they want to think about, and it’s definitely something they want to offload.”
As Sphere scaled, the internal burden increased in parallel. Coordinating payments across multiple jurisdictions on behalf of customers and reconciling every transfer was becoming impossible to manage.
“The amount of international filings piling up was going to be completely unsustainable,” Nicholas shared. “That’s when I knew we needed an embedded solution.”
Sphere set out to completely automate the remittance workflow within its platform. The requirements were ambitious:
A white-labeled, fully embedded solution
A flexible API that could automate payouts end-to-end
A reliable global network to pay tax authorities around the world
The ability to pay tax authorities precise amounts in local currency
Traditional banks couldn’t support this level of automation, and existing tools required too much manual coordination. Sphere needed a financial infrastructure built for global platforms.
The solution: an embedded way to automate global tax remittance
Sphere adopted Airwallex to power both funding and payouts, transforming a manual, multi-system process into an entirely automated experience.
With Airwallex, Sphere enables customers to authorize wallet funding as part of its embedded tax remittance flow: no separate systems, no last-minute scramble.
“What Airwallex has allowed us to do is take what was previously a very time-consuming, multi-step workflow and completely remove that burden from both parties,” Nicholas explained.
Using Airwallex’s Platform APIs, Sphere embedded tax remittance directly into its product. Once a tax return is approved, Sphere can automatically initiate payments to global tax authorities on behalf of its customers via the Airwallex network.
Nicholas Rudder
Founder and CEO of Sphere
“We needed something flexible, with a great developer experience, that we could totally white-label into our platform. Airwallex fits perfectly into what we’re building.”
Every step – from funding to payout to confirmation – now happens inside Sphere, ensuring payments are executed consistently and accurately, while delivering a seamless workflow for both customers and Sphere’s internal team.
The results: from wires and workarounds to an end-to-end, automated tax engine
By integrating Airwallex, Sphere has transformed one of the most painful finance workflows in global business: paying taxes across multiple countries.
Key outcomes include:
A fully automated remittance flow – no more logging into multiple bank accounts or initiating transfers
Greater accuracy and consistency in tax payments, lowering the risk of human error, missed steps, or incorrect amounts
Significant operational efficiency for customers and Sphere’s team, reducing manual effort and last-minute payment rushes
A streamlined user experience, with every remittance step handled inside the platform
“The financial impact is very real,” Nicholas shared. “No one in the market is doing what Airwallex enables us to do.”
Airwallex helps Sphere deliver on its mission: to help companies go global from day one.
“Tax payments are a key part of that,” Nicholas added. “Airwallex automating that part of the business is helping us fulfill our mission.”
Where AI-native tax compliance meets embedded global finance
Sphere continues to expand rapidly among global software and AI companies, and automated tax remittance has become a powerful differentiator.
Nicholas Rudder
Founder and CEO of Sphere
“We help companies go global from day one – that is our core mission. Airwallex is helping us make that possible.”
With Airwallex, Sphere has turned a slow, manual, error-prone process into a modern, embedded experience built for global scale.
