Airwallex reveals outdated payment systems cost global businesses $330bn every year
New research from Airwallex, a leading global financial platform for modern businesses, has revealed legacy payment systems are tying up billions in working capital and slowing global economic growth.
The analysis conducted by Airwallex and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) exposes the true scale of ‘Global Growth Tariff’ – a term coined by Airwallex to describe the hidden working capital costs imposed on businesses by inefficiencies in legacy Business-to-Business (B2B) cross-border payment systems.
The Global Growth Tariff represents the $330bn in working capital lost in the global financial system due to inefficiencies in international B2B payments, equivalent to around 9% of the UK’s annual GDP. This includes payment failures, foreign exchange spreads and correspondent banking fees and slow settlement cycles.
The research shows that businesses across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) – a region with a high volume of cross-border trade and diverse banking and regulatory systems – face a significant burden, with an erosion of approximately $144bn. This means that companies making regular international supplier payments face tens of thousands of dollars in hidden costs and delayed settlements each year, reducing cash flow and growth potential.
“Legacy payment systems are quietly draining billions from businesses that can least afford it. Payment failures, high FX fees, and slow settlement cycles don’t just hurt the bottom line – they freeze the capital businesses need to move fast in an unpredictable world. Every dollar stuck in the system is a dollar not invested in growth. Modern infrastructure fixes this: faster, transparent, and built for the way global business actually works today.” said Firdevs Abacioglu, Head of Data Science and AI at Airwallex.
Cebr’s research examined B2B payment failure rates, foreign exchange costs across major currency corridors, and settlement timeframes for international supplier and contractor payments. By combining publicly available data on B2B cross-border payment volumes with established research on payment system inefficiencies, the study quantified the scale of capital frozen in the global financial system.
The research revealed that businesses worldwide face an invisible tax on B2B commerce totalling £330bn, with the Global Growth Tariff breaking down as follows:
- Payment failures and repair costs drain $27.2bn annually. When B2B payments fail to process automatically, they may require manual intervention. These non-straight-through processing (STP) failures generate repair fees that cascade through supply chains.
- Foreign exchange spreads and correspondent banking fees erode approximately $289bn in business capital each year globally.
- The immobilisation of slow settlement cycles cost roughly $14bn in working capital at any given moment globally. This reduces the amount of productive liquidity available to businesses for growth, investment and operations.
While businesses across EMEA face the most acute regional burden, the US accounts for the single largest national share of losses at $43.7bn. Across APAC, businesses in major trading hubs including Singapore and Australia also face significant costs, with losses totalling almost $13bn combined.
“Our analysis identifies a significant and persistent set of inefficiencies within legacy cross-border B2B payment systems, which collectively impose a material drag on business activity,” said Liam Daly, Senior Economist at Cebr. “For Global businesses, these frictions translate directly into higher costs, reduced liquidity and less efficient capital allocation. Addressing them would support more efficient cross-border transactions and unlock capital for productive use.”
The findings come at a time when businesses across all industries are under increasing pressure to optimise working capital amid ongoing economic uncertainty and growing complexity in global trade.
Airwallex will release a second phase of this research, examining how the Global Growth Tariff varies across industries and business size, including detailed analysis of sectors such as SaaS, tourism and e-commerce.