Airwallex vs YouBiz: Which Is Better for Singapore SMEs?

A side-by-side comparison of two ways to cut the fees on cross-border business spend

Airwallex and YouBiz are both MAS-licensed multi-currency business accounts built to reduce or eliminate the FX markups often charged by traditional business banking products. Both give you a multi-currency account, corporate cards, and unlimited 1% cashback.

The honest split comes down to two things: what you actually pay each month, and what you’re optimising for. YouBiz costs S$0/month with every feature included. Airwallex is free to start but gates higher card limits, approval workflows, and team seats behind paid plans, with Grow at S$79/month and Accelerate from S$399/month.

If your company’s spend looks like Stripe subscriptions, AWS and OpenAI invoices, Meta and Google ad bills, and the odd overseas supplier payment, both will save you money versus a bank. The difference shows up in the fine print: how much you pay to unlock the features you need, what it costs to spend in a currency you haven’t pre-funded, and how many cards and teammates you can add before the bill starts climbing.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison.

⚡ TL;DR: Airwallex vs YouBiz at a Glance

Feature	YouBiz	Airwallex
Monthly fee	S$0/month, all features included	Explore free (limited); Grow S$79/month; Accelerate from S$399/month (plan fees exclude GST)
Unlimited 1% cashback	Yes, no minimum, no cap, on all eligible spend	Yes, on card spend
Card FX fee	Real 0% FX at wholesale rates, 150+ spend currencies	0% from held balances; 0.4% (major) / 0.6% (other) above interbank to auto-convert
Cards included	Up to 100	10 (Explore) / 50 (Grow) / unlimited (Accelerate)
Team / spend users	Unlimited team members	5 free, then S$5/user/month
Currencies held	8	20+
Card network	Mastercard	Visa
Regulation	MAS major payment institution; Mastercard Principal Member	MAS-licensed major payment institution

For businesses with regular overseas spend, FX costs and subscription fees often have a larger impact than headline rewards. A 3.25% bank FX markup on S$20,000 of overseas spend is around S$650 gone in a quarter. A “free” plan that caps you at 10 cards forces an upgrade the moment the team grows.

YouBiz offers the full feature set, real 0% FX, and 1% cashback for free.

Table of Contents

1. What Is YouBiz?
2. What Is Airwallex, and What Is It Used For?
3. Pricing: What You Actually Pay
4. Cashback: Airwallex vs YouBiz
5. FX Fees and Overseas Spend: Airwallex vs YouBiz
6. Cards, Currencies and Team Controls
7. Transfers and Getting Set Up
8. Which Is Right for Your Business?
9. Airwallex vs YouBiz: FAQ

What Is YouBiz?

YouBiz is the multi-currency business account from YouTrip, Singapore’s most-used travel wallet. It’s built for one job done well: cross-border business spend without the fees. You get a multi-currency account across 8 currencies, free physical and virtual Mastercard corporate cards that spend across 150+ currencies at real 0% FX, and unlimited 1% cashback on all eligible spend, all at S$0/month.

YouBiz is a Principal Member of Mastercard and a MAS-licensed major payment institution, so your funds are safeguarded under the Payment Services Act. Where Airwallex is a broad platform, YouBiz is a focused spend-and-expense account: corporate cards, card controls, and overseas payments, with nothing to upgrade to.

What Is Airwallex?

Image Credits: Airwallex

Airwallex is a global payments and financial platform founded in Melbourne in 2015, now dual-headquartered in Singapore and San Francisco. SMEs use it for multi-currency business accounts, corporate Visa cards, international transfers, expense management, and, for online sellers, collecting customer payments through a payment gateway. It’s a broad platform that scales from startups up to larger enterprises running multiple global entities.

In Singapore, Airwallex is a MAS-licensed major payment institution. Its business account holds 20+ currencies, its Visa cards charge 0% transaction fees when you spend from a held balance, and it offers unlimited 1% cashback on card spend.

Pricing: What You Actually Pay

This is the clearest difference between the two:

YouBiz is S$0/month. Every feature comes on the free account: up to 100 corporate cards, unlimited team members, multi-condition approvals, merchant-category (MCC) locks, and real-time expense tracking. There’s no premium tier, because nothing is held back.

Airwallex charges in tiers (excluding GST):

• Explore is free, but capped at 10 company cards and 5 spend users, with basic approvals.
  
• Grow is S$79/month, lifting you to 50 cards and adding customisable approval workflows.
  
• Accelerate starts from S$399/month, for unlimited cards and enterprise controls.

Both beat a bank on price. But the moment your team needs more than 10 cards or proper approval workflows, Airwallex’s bill starts at S$79/month and climbs. Extra spend users are S$5/user/month beyond the free five. On YouBiz, those same controls are included at S$0/month from day one.

Tier	YouBiz	Airwallex
Entry	S$0/month, full features	Explore: free, 10 cards, 5 users
Mid	No upgrade needed	Grow: S$79/month, 50 cards
Top	No upgrade needed	Accelerate: from S$399/month, unlimited cards

Cashback: Airwallex vs YouBiz

This is where the two are closest. Both offer unlimited 1% cashback on card spend, with no minimum and no cap.

YouBiz pays 1% on all eligible card spend, credited by the 15th of the following month (so March spend lands by 15 April). A handful of categories are excluded, as on any cashback card: wallet top-ups like PayLah! and GrabPay, investments, remittance, insurance, and government or tax payments.

Airwallex matches it: unlimited 1% on its Visa Business Cashback Debit Card, across digital ad spend and all other local and international transactions, credited monthly to your statement. The usual exclusions apply here too, so it’s worth checking your main spend categories qualify either way.

For typical SaaS, ad, and supplier spend, both cards earn their 1%, so cashback is close to a wash. The bigger money is in the FX.

FX Fees and Overseas Spend: Airwallex vs YouBiz

Both accounts advertise 0% FX, but the conditions differ, and a high-spend business feels the gap.

• Airwallex: the 0% transaction fee applies when you spend from a balance you already hold in that currency. If you don’t hold it, the card auto-converts, and Airwallex’s FX conversion fee kicks in: 0.4% above the interbank rate for major currencies, 0.6% for the rest. Getting to a true 0% means pre-funding every currency you plan to spend in.
  
• YouBiz: real 0% FX across 150+ currencies, using Mastercard’s wholesale exchange rate. You spend, it converts at wholesale rates, and YouBiz adds no markup of its own. 

YouBiz applies the wholesale rate automatically across 150+currencies, while Airwallex only hits 0% on currencies if you pre-fund first.

Cards, Currencies and Team Controls

• Cards: YouBiz includes up to 100 corporate cards free. Airwallex includes 10 on the free plan, 50 on Grow, and unlimited on Accelerate.
  
• Team members: YouBiz lets you invite unlimited users across four roles (Admin, Finance, Accountant, General). Airwallex gives 5 spend users free, then S$5/user/month.
  
• Controls: Both offer spend limits, virtual cards, and merchant-category locks. YouBiz includes multi-condition and two-layer approvals on the free account; Airwallex’s customisable approvals sit on Grow and above.
  
• Currencies held: Airwallex holds 20+ currencies (including CAD, NZD, and MXN); YouBiz holds 8 (SGD, USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, HKD, AUD, CHF). The trade-off is what it takes to spend at 0%: with YouBiz you don’t need to pre-fund a currency, because cards convert across 150+ currencies at wholesale automatically. With Airwallex, a 0% card transaction means holding that currency first.
  
• Card network: YouBiz runs on Mastercard, accepted at over 80 million merchants worldwide; Airwallex runs on Visa. Acceptance is broadly comparable for online and offline spend.

Transfers and Getting Set Up

Both handle international payments well below bank rates.

• YouBiz sends to 20 currencies via the Dashboard with no FX fees, and local transfers go up to S$200,000 per transaction with free batch transfers.

• Airwallex reaches more markets, moving money to 200+ countries and regions across 60+ currencies, with batch transfers to up to 1,000 recipients in one go; conversions on those transfers run at its usual 0.4% to 0.6% above interbank.

Setup is quick on both:

• YouBiz takes under 5 minutes to apply via Singpass MyInfo Business; approval lands within 1–2 business days, your virtual Mastercard is live in the app immediately, and the physical card follows in 5–7 working days.

• Airwallex is also fully online and free to open with no minimum deposit; its application takes around 15 minutes and approval usually lands within a few business days.

For the books, YouBiz connects to Xero (with 50% off your first 6 months), while Airwallex syncs with Xero, QuickBooks, and NetSuite.

Which Is Right for Your Business?

Airwallex is a strong platform. It holds 20+ currencies and includes a payment gateway to collect card payments from your own customers, so it scales neatly for larger finance teams running multiple global entities. If accepting customer payments is a core part of your business, that breadth matters.

The catch is what it costs to use properly:

• The free Explore plan caps you at 10 company cards and 5 spend users with only basic approvals.
  
• More cards, customisable approval workflows, and extra seats mean moving up to Grow at S$79/month or Accelerate from S$399/month, plus S$5/user/month beyond the free five.
  
• And the 0% card FX only kicks in when you already hold the currency you’re spending; anything else auto-converts at 0.4% to 0.6% above interbank.

 For a business that mostly wants cards, expenses, and cheap FX, that’s a lot of plan (and a lot of pre-funding) to manage for things YouBiz includes for free.

YouBiz is the stronger fit for most Singapore SMEs: startups, agencies, e-commerce sellers, and finance leads who want the full corporate-card-and-expense toolkit without paying for tiers. You get:

• Up to 100 cards and unlimited team seats
• Real 0% FX across 150+ currencies with no pre-funding
• Unlimited 1% cashback, all at S$0/month

There’s no upgrade path to climb, and nothing held back. So the account that gets you started is the same one that scales with you. For the core SME job, controlling and saving on what your business actually spends, YouBiz wins on price and simplicity.

Airwallex vs YouBiz: FAQ

Built for the Way Singapore SMEs Actually Spend

Your company’s money goes out the door as Stripe charges, AWS and OpenAI invoices, ad spend, and overseas supplier payments. YouBiz is built to make all of it cost less: real 0% FX across 150+ currencies, unlimited 1% cashback, and up to 100 cards with unlimited team seats, all at S$0/month, with nothing to upgrade to.

Apply in under 5 minutes at you.co/biz. Once approved, your virtual Mastercard is available immediately, while your physical card arrives within 5–7 working days. 

Already saving on overseas spend? Refer another business owner and you each earn S$50 when they sign up and make their first card spend.