“You cannot know how important for the economy and also for just the emotional fabric of a community restaurants are. Restaurants provide a place for the community to come together and do their social life, to do their business life, to do their personal life.” — Danny Meyer

OpenTable was founded with a mission to serve restaurants, and became a global leader in restaurant tech doing just that. It launched in 1998 to connect diners with restaurants in San Francisco, and its network has grown to support restaurants in all 50 states and internationally. Today, it serves more than 70,000 restaurants, bars, wineries and other venues globally. We’ve built Airwallex to serve just this kind of business, one that is global in reach, with local needs across many markets.

For a platform like OpenTable, operating in global markets requires a deep understanding of how diners there prefer to book and how local restaurants run their businesses, and then building a go-to-market approach around those on-the-ground realities. It also requires the financial infrastructure to accept and settle payments in each market, using the local payment methods diners prefer.

One of the paradoxes of building a global business today is that the more markets you serve, the more important local infrastructure becomes. Borders haven't disappeared nor have the differences in how businesses and financial systems operate from one country to the next. Global scale increasingly depends on getting those local details right.

Airwallex has done the work to simplify that last part. We’ve built local payment infrastructure country by country, so our customers don’t have to assemble a new financial stack each time they expand. That gives a platform like OpenTable one provider that can further help its global network of local restaurants accept and manage payments. At launch, the partnership will span the US and Canada, with plans to expand internationally later this year, including Australia and Mexico.

Restaurant owners and employees experience the value of OpenTable’s platform every day, as they finalize their food orders or determine whether to call in additional wait staff. As a CFO, I know how much a reliable forecast matters, particularly when margins are tight. That’s never truer than heading into the holidays, when restaurants staff up and stock up for their biggest nights.

Each booking is a demand signal but by no means a guarantee. When a reservation is a no-show, the restaurant has already committed the inventory and labor, but won’t receive the anticipated revenue. That's why I’m particularly excited about the part of OpenTable’s platform we’re helping power, its reservation deposits and prepaid Experiences. These payment tools can help restaurants secure bookings, earn revenue upfront, and ultimately help reduce diner no-shows. OpenTable’s own data shows prepaid Experiences reduce no-shows by 45% and late cancellations by 66% compared to non-prepaid Experiences.* For an individual restaurant better visibility into revenue and cash flow can help make a meaningful difference to a business operating on thin margins. And when a global platform can bring those capabilities to tens of thousands of restaurants, the economic impact extends well beyond the platform itself.

That, to me, is one of the most promising developments in the next era of globalization. The infrastructure and capabilities once reserved for the largest enterprises are becoming accessible to businesses of every size. A neighborhood restaurant doesn't need to become a multinational to benefit from the advantages of one.

We’re proud to play a small part in giving restaurants on OpenTable more room to focus on what matters most: welcoming guests and delivering great service. Restaurants on OpenTable can get started at airwallex.com/en-us/airwallex-opentable-partnership.

*Methodology: Based on global OpenTable data comparing no-show rates and late cancellation rates for pre-paid Experiences vs. non-prepaid Experiences in 2025.

The material presented here is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, regulatory, taxation, or investment advice. Readers should engage their own advisors or counsel for advice unique to their circumstances.

Pranav SoodCFO, Airwallex

Pranav Sood is Chief Financial Officer at Airwallex, helping lead the company’s next phase of growth. His background spans strategy, operations, and investment roles across Bain & Company, GoCardless, Airwallex, and Bain Capital, giving him a distinctly strategic and commercial perspective on modern finance leadership.