Airwallex Expense Management: Is It Better than Expensify? My Hands-On Experience
You know, I’ve been using Expensify for ages. It’s the default, right? Everyone just jumps on it because it’s the thing. But recently, our team started looking hard at Airwallex because we needed better control over company spending—especially the international stuff. Expensify handles basic receipts fine, but when you start dealing with multiple currencies and pre-approved budgets for different projects, it gets messy fast.
I decided to dive in myself and really compare the two, focusing on how easily I could set things up and, honestly, how painful it was to submit my expense reports at the end of the month. That’s the real test, isn’t it?
Setting Up the Rules and Cards
First thing I noticed with Airwallex was the ease of issuing physical and virtual cards. Seriously, this was a game-changer. With Expensify, it’s mostly just receipt scanning and reimbursement, or integrating with your existing corporate cards, which always introduces friction.
With Airwallex, I logged into the dashboard, navigated to the ‘Cards’ section, and within minutes, I spun up a few virtual cards for specific teams—one for our AWS spending, and another for a short-term marketing campaign. This allowed me to set hard limits right on the card. I capped the AWS card at $5,000 a month. Try doing that seamlessly with Expensify’s basic system; you usually need a whole separate layer of banking software.
The control was instant. I could also set rules like, “This card can only be used for online subscriptions” or “No ATM withdrawals.” This granular control is what sold me initially. It stops the spending before it starts, rather than just tracking it after the fact, which is what Expensify mostly does.
The Expense Submission Flow: The Moment of Truth
This is where the rubber meets the road. No one likes expense reports. Expensify relies heavily on the SmartScan feature, which is okay, but often needs manual corrections, especially with faded or foreign receipts.
Airwallex’s approach ties the expense directly to the card transaction. Since the card is already in the system, when I make a purchase, I get a push notification on my phone instantly asking me to upload the receipt and categorize the expense. Because the amount and vendor are already populated from the card transaction, it’s just two quick steps: snap the pic, assign a tag (e.g., ‘Client Dinner’).
- Airwallex: Purchase made -> Instant notification -> Snap receipt -> Done. The transaction data is already there.
- Expensify: Purchase made -> Keep receipt -> Scan receipt (often later) -> SmartScan analyzes -> Verify/Correct data -> Submit.
For me, the Airwallex process cut the time I spent on monthly reports by about 60%. Because I dealt with each expense as it happened, there was no massive pile of crumpled paper or forgotten transactions at the month end.
Handling the Global Grind
Our business has increased overseas travel and software subscriptions billed in Euros and GBP. This is where Expensify started falling apart for us. The foreign currency conversions, especially tracking the exact exchange rate used by the bank versus the official rate, always caused headaches for our finance team during reconciliation.
Airwallex, being a global payments platform first, naturally handles this better. When I use an Airwallex card in Europe, the funds are debited from the relevant currency wallet (we hold EUR and USD wallets). The exchange rate is locked in their system, reducing slippage and simplifying the accounting reconciliation massively. My finance guy stopped yelling at me about missing pennies on conversion.
The Final Verdict After the Switch
I’m not saying Expensify is bad for a small, local business that just needs basic receipt logging and reimbursement. It’s simple and effective for that.
But for anyone running a growing operation that needs to control spending before it happens, issue multiple cards with specific rules, and deal with different currencies frequently, Airwallex blows it out of the water. We transitioned fully after a three-month trial run. The initial setup was a smooth process, mainly involving linking bank accounts and defining the expense categories. The finance team loves the automated reconciliation, and the employees (like me) appreciate not having to hunt down receipts or battle with incorrect SmartScans anymore. It’s less “track and punish” and more “enable and control.” That subtle difference makes all the difference in the world.