McLaren Racing enters the payments fast lane

The finance operation at McLaren Racing is being streamlined as the team seeks improvements both on and off the Formula One motor racing track.
The team recently launched a review of its treasury management and savings made will be put back into its cars as this year’s grand prix world championship comes to a head.
“We are a high-performing sports team that is seeking speed and innovation on and off the track,” Laura Bowden, the chief financial officer at McLaren Racing, said. “This means being as effective and efficient as possible. We are modernising processes and systems and are leaning into partners to solve inefficiencies.”
Airwallex, the end-to-end payments platform that is already a McLaren partner, has come up with a bespoke payment template for the company. Previously, McLaren’s international payments run consisted of thirty payments made one at a time, which was inefficient and time-consuming. McLaren can now push payments through as a batch, taking a little under an hour per run. Over the course of a month, this process is said to be saving its finance team half a day’s work.
With Airwallex, transfer speeds also have been reduced from days to hours and McLaren benefits from competitively priced foreign exchange rates.
“What we save on transfer fees frees up more funds to invest in the car and its performance for the rest of the season,” Bowden said. “It is an opportunity to close the gap [on rivals]. We operate under a cost cap and have to make really important decisions over where to best allocate funds.”
The British team, whose driver Lando Norris won the Singapore Grand Prix yesterday, has gone through a financial turnaround in recent years as the sport has exploded in popularity. It is now cashflow-positive.
Airwallex was founded in Melbourne in 2015 and now is based in Singapore. The company has grown to 23 locations worldwide and employs more than 1,500 people. It has 100,000 customers, both large and small.
“McLaren has offered a rare opportunity that partners precision with continuous improvement, teamwork and speed,” Pranav Sood, of Airwallex, said. “They have been so open to efficiency and effectiveness.”
Last month Airwallex said it had surpassed $100 billion in annual processing volumes, up 73 per cent year-on-year, and had achieved an annual run rate revenue of almost $500 million across all its products, including payments, foreign exchange, payouts and issuing.