So, I’ve been juggling global payroll for a bit now, you know, trying to figure out the best way to pay people scattered all over the map without pulling my hair out. I started off with the usual messy mix—bank transfers, local accountants, the whole shebang. It was a nightmare. So much manual work, constant worry about compliance, and the fees were just eating into everything.
The Initial Struggle: Too Many Spreadsheets, Too Many Headaches
My first attempt at centralizing things involved a ridiculous set of spreadsheets and trying to coordinate different local payroll providers. We were growing fast, hiring contractors in places like Romania, Brazil, and India. Every month-end was a scramble. Missing deadlines, confusing tax rules—I felt like an amateur international lawyer more than an operations guy.
I realized quickly that this patchwork approach wasn’t scalable. We needed a proper global payroll platform. The market is full of them, but two kept popping up: Airwallex and Deel. I decided to dive deep and actually use both for a trial run with a small group of contractors and employees.
Putting Deel to the Test
I started with Deel because everyone talks about them for EOR (Employer of Record) services. That seemed like a big win—offloading compliance and contracts completely. Setting up a contract for a new hire in Germany was super straightforward. The UI is slick, very modern, easy to navigate. I liked that the contract generation and signing process was all baked in. It felt very “one-stop-shop” for managing international contractors.
- The Setup: Quick. Entered the contractor details, salary, and location. Deel handled the localization of the contract.
- The Payment Flow: Relatively smooth. I could fund my Deel account and payments went out in local currency. The contractors seemed happy with the withdrawal options.
- The Costs: Transparent, but definitely geared towards EOR and contractor management fees. When I looked at just processing payroll for direct employees, it felt a bit heavy on the service charges, even if the peace of mind was worth something.
For paying contractors, Deel is great. It handles the compliance paperwork effortlessly, making sure we’re not misclassifying anyone. But when I tried to integrate it with our existing entities for full-time employees, the friction points started showing up. It felt like they wanted me to move everything onto their EOR model, which wasn’t what we needed everywhere.
Switching Gears to Airwallex
Next, I jumped onto Airwallex. I’d mostly associated them with multi-currency accounts and transfers, but they’ve really built out their payroll capability, especially for businesses that already have entities established internationally and just need efficient money movement.
What immediately struck me about Airwallex was the focus on the actual money transfer aspect. For payroll, if you are paying 50 people across 10 different countries, the FX rates and transfer fees can kill you. Airwallex’s platform let me hold funds in various currencies and execute payments directly, without the endless chain of bank fees and marked-up exchange rates.
- The Setup: More focused on integrating with existing payroll processes. Less about contract generation, more about the bank transfer logistics. I uploaded my payroll run data—the net pay amounts—and designated the currency accounts.
- The Payment Flow: Lightning fast. I executed a batch payment to contractors and employees in Europe and Asia. The funds landed quicker than anything I’d used before, often same-day or next-day. This was a game-changer for speed and reliability.
- The Costs: Very competitive on FX. The transparency around the exchange rate was way better than what my traditional bank offered. It felt like their strength was purely the efficient movement of large volumes of different currencies for a set purpose, like payroll.
The Verdict After Running Parallel Payrolls
After about three months of running specific payroll groups through both platforms, I finally figured out where each one shines. It really depends on what your biggest headache is right now.
If your main issue is complexity and compliance with contractors or needing to hire quickly in a new country without setting up a legal entity, go with Deel. They manage the legal risk and the contracting process brilliantly. They take the entire compliance burden off your shoulders, which is worth a lot if you’re risk-averse.
But if your company already has established entities, manages its own payroll logic (tax filings, local compliance) through accountants, and your biggest pain point is the cost and slow speed of actually moving money internationally to pay those people, Airwallex is the clear winner. Their core strength is the financial rails. Cheaper, faster multi-currency transfers, which is what 90% of my payroll run is—just getting the right amount of money into the right bank account globally, quickly and without massive FX loss.
For us, since we already have established entities in key markets and use local accountants for compliance filings, the financial efficiency of Airwallex won out. We use them as the primary payment engine for the final leg of our global payroll run. It cut our transfer costs significantly and improved delivery speed. Deel remains a tool we keep handy, but mainly for those tricky one-off contractor hires in entirely new markets where we absolutely cannot deal with the compliance setup.