Checkout.com vs Airwallex
Checkout.com is a European alternative to Airwallex — same payments & finance use case, built under EU data-protection law.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Global payments platform — Unified Payments API, AI-driven acceptance optimisation, and 150+ processing currencies worldwide.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- GDPR by default
- Yes
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- No
- Free tier
- No
A curated collection of the best European alternatives to Airwallex.
- Jurisdiction
- US
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
About Checkout.com
Checkout.com is a global end-to-end payment services provider processing transactions for enterprise merchants across 150+ currencies and a broad range of local payment methods. Its Unified Payments API covers online acceptance, payout disbursement, card issuing, fraud detection, and identity verification — replacing a fragmented stack with a single integration.
The Intelligent Acceptance module applies machine learning to maximise transaction approval rates in real time, while Flow provides customisable checkout UI blocks optimised across devices. Risk management and 3D Secure authentication operate simultaneously, reducing both fraud and friction at checkout.
Key benefits:
- Unified Payments API for acceptance, payouts, issuing, and verification
- Intelligent Acceptance — AI-driven optimisation of transaction approval rates
- Custom Flow checkout blocks for branded, conversion-optimised UIs
- Fraud detection and 3DS authentication in a single integrated layer
- Card issuing and payouts for embedded financial product use cases
- 150+ processing currencies with global local payment method coverage
Checkout.com is headquartered in London, UK, with offices across 19 global locations, and was named a Leader in the Forrester Wave for Merchant Payment Providers (Q1 2026). European merchant data is processed in compliant infrastructure across its global data centre network.
Why choose Checkout.com over Airwallex?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. Airwallex is headquartered in US, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes — the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
Checkout.com removes that overhead. As a United Kingdom-based provider, it operates natively under GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors — health, public administration, finance — that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single non-EU jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.