Case study: BFT simplifies its payment processes

Fitness franchise BFT has been experiencing domestic and international growth and needed a payment platform to support its continuing expansion.

Luke Chamberlain, chief financial officer (CFO) at BFT spoke to Digital Nation about the fitness company’s journey to find a new payment platform.

He said BFT grew quickly as a brand growing in Australia, expanding across New Zealand and Singapore, and now they’ve been setting up locations across the UK and Europe.

“It's very quickly getting out of hand with the amount of entities, bank accounts or places that I need to move money from and to,” he explained.

“In addition to the gym brand itself, we own a company called Three Pillars that imports and exports gym equipment, and sells two-thirds of the equipment to gym franchises which are manufactured in China.”

He said because of these factors, BFT needed a simple way to accept and transfer money between different countries. 

BFT partnered with Airwallex two years ago to help assist them with their international transfers.

“That is what Airwallex has been helping me with the most. It's transferring money from place to place, being able to have it all in one spot on one little dashboard where I can see all of it,” Chamberlain said.

“It's been fantastic for setting up bank accounts I can set up a new bank account in 30 seconds. I can pick a place, make it and then suddenly there's money there. I can accept things, it's been quite useful. It's been a pain trying to set up bank accounts in other places."

In comparison, using another bank it took BFT six months to set up a bank account in New Zealand.

“The fact that I can use Airwallex instantly is so much easier," he said. 

Before Airwallex, BFT was using payment platforms that were charging them tens of thousands of dollars a year in foreign transaction fees.

“The massive monetary saving and in absolute terms, value terms and then the ease of use, ease of access. Everything's a lot faster, everything's a lot quicker,” he ended.